


Not on the Forecast...

by Scarshavestories



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Partners, Community: hp_drizzle, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, HP Drizzle Fest 2019, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Mystery, Oblivious, Pining, Short description of physical injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-24 08:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20703278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarshavestories/pseuds/Scarshavestories
Summary: After the hurricane, Draco is injured and walking barefoot. But he couldn’t care less…When Draco turned over a fresh page in his life, he had no idea that this new chapter would bring with it an infuriating messy-haired git, a series of mysterious cases of unnatural weather, and some unexpected feelings.





	Not on the Forecast...

**Author's Note:**

> Massive, massive thank you to Andithiel for alpha reading and cheerleading this fic, she is completely and utterly incredible and this fic would still be a sad wip rather than a finished one I’m very proud of without her! ❤️
> 
> Thank you to the mods for organising and giving me an extension, and to acarnivalofidiots on Tumblr for the amazing prompt 😊

10th August 2008

Gritting his teeth, Draco braced himself against the stabbing pain in his left arm and used a jagged rock to push himself up. With wide eyes, he swept the scene of devastation and ruin that used to be a tranquil loch. Now, bits of debris floated in what had been clear, glassy water; pieces of nature ripped up, violently flung and messily strewn by the powerful swirl of the hurricane. 

Draco’s arm was likely broken, but he had bigger things to worry about; Harry Potter, the ultimate survivor, was nowhere to be seen. 

Draco refused to think about the possibility that Harry was anything other than invincible. He had survived Voldemort, he couldn’t possibly have been taken out by an unnatural bout of weather. Looking around at the scene of utter destruction where there used to be a forest, Draco began to truly comprehend the sheer force and power the hurricane had held. His heart plummeted to somewhere near his toes, the sinking feeling of dread and fear filling his every vein. 

The hurricane had thrown Draco into the loch, but seeing the number of fallen trees which used to stand proudly by the shoreline, he suspected that the icy water might just have saved him. His ridiculous Muggle boots had filled up and fallen to the depths of the loch, but the thought of them just reignited Draco’s need to find Harry, to have him laugh at Draco’s inability to call them the right name again. 

Draco cradled his arm and began to walk in the direction he thought they might have come, desperately scanning from left to right for signs of life, for signs of anything that could lead him to where Harry had ended up. His bare feet stung and ached as he stepped on broken branches and stones, but he barely noticed the pain. He had to find Harry. 

They had been arguing. It was stupid, and it was Draco’s fault. Maybe if he hadn’t kicked up so much of a fuss, they would have been more observant and they would have seen a clue; they would have been able to stop this. Hurricanes don’t happen in the Scottish Highlands - not naturally, at least. There was someone here, some wizard or witch or magical creature, and they were turning the Great British weather into a great big catastrophe.

* * *

November 2006

The Ministry of Magic’s atrium really was a masterclass in imposing design, and Draco couldn’t help but admire just how effectively the towering walls were intimidating him as he stepped towards the enormous lifts. He tried fruitlessly to ignore the tiny voice in the back of his mind which suggested that it was not the architecture to blame for Draco’s sense of unease, but the destination for which he was headed. 

Draco refused to find something as mundane as a new job daunting or frightening. He simply would not allow himself to feel such ridiculous emotions; he was a Malfoy, for Salazar’s sake. He was a father, and the thought of his son spurred Draco on, making him quicken his pace as he crossed the atrium. 

Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy was the light of Draco’s life. It may have only been a few short months, but the tiny child had shifted Draco’s whole outlook, as if his entire universe had tilted on its axis. Whereas before, Draco had been content to accept the life his parents had planned for him; to unquestioningly follow the path that had been set, now he had a reason to take his life into his own hands. 

The second Draco had seen the innocent little face of his son, he had realised that he could not allow this adorable baby boy to suffer the abuse that he had tolerated on a day to day basis. Draco hadn’t had a choice when he was a child, but he had a choice now, and he was going to do right by this tiny baby if it killed him. 

The biggest, most significant element of Draco’s plan to create a better life for Scorpius was this job. Joining the Aurors, when one had spent the first years of one’s adult life being prosecuted by them, and when one’s father was still held in their custody, may seem counterintuitive, but to Draco, it made perfect sense. What better way to prove that he was now on the right side of the law than to fight for it? 

An unexpected addition to Draco’s life rejuvenation had not, in fact, come from Draco himself. It had taken him days to work up the courage to inform his mother of his plan, but when he had finally broken the news, her reaction was quite unexpected. Instead of the awful, uncomfortable disappointment Draco had expected to endure, his mother had instead looked at him in a way that had made him feel as if she could see straight through to his very soul, and had taken Draco completely off guard with her words. 

“I can’t say I entirely support your desire to work in such a role, but I am glad you’re finally showing some interest in your own existence.” Draco had opened his mouth to respond, but his mother had raised her hand to stop him. “I think it may also be time to drop the pretence shadowing the rest of your life. I know Astoria’s mother sadly passed earlier this year, and what with her father not surviving the war and Lucius in Azkaban, I believe I’m the only reason that you’re continuing this charade.” Her piercing eye contact had made Draco squirm, but he’d known better than to avert his gaze. “So, I’m telling you now, I know, and I hate the thought that you’re shutting yourself into a life that isn’t meant for you for my sake.”

Draco had stared at his mother for quite some time after she finished speaking, trying desperately to determine whether she had somehow discovered his secret, or whether she was talking about something else entirely. In the end, she had grown impatient with his silence, and spoken again. 

“So would you like me to contact the family lawyers? Or would you rather remain married to a woman whom I know that you do not love?”

“I do love Astoria! She’s the mother of my son, of course I love her.”

“Forgive me Draco, I was referring to romantic love. Would you describe your relationship with Astoria as a romantic one?”

That evening, Draco had found himself staring at Scorpius; he was sleeping so peacefully, so unaware of his father’s internal turmoil. Astoria had come up to him and silently lead him away to the drawing room. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Her voice had been kind and patient as ever. 

“I told Mother about becoming an Auror,” he’d said, collapsing onto the sofa. 

“Yeah? Was she upset?” With far more grace, Astoria had joined him. 

“No… she told me she knows I’m living a lie.” 

Astoria had sucked in a harsh breath, her eyes wide as she stared at him. “How? Was it my fault? Oh Draco, I’m so sorry if I wasn’t good enough at pretending to be in love with you.” She’d sounded so concerned, and it’d filled Draco with fond affection. “I did try, I thought I was doing all the things the women in those Muggle films did. Apart from the snogging.” Astoria’s nose had wrinkled. “You’re my best friend and I’d do almost anything for you, but I’m sorry, snogging sounds gross.”

Draco couldn’t help but smile in amusement. “I feel like I should be offended that my wife makes that face when thinking about kissing me.”

The look of disgust had instantly been wiped from Astoria’s face as she began to laugh. 

“As if you’d want to kiss me in the first place!”

Draco had nodded, conceding her point. “True. This isn’t your fault, though. You did a wonderful job of hiding your asexuality, I’m pretty sure she must have guessed I was gay at some point during my adolescence.” He’d frowned, reflecting on the past with fresh perspective. “I think that’s why she seemed so disappointed when we announced our engagement, because she knew that it was for show.”

“I thought she just didn’t like me!” 

Astoria had shuffled along sofa until she was close enough to throw her arm around Draco’s shoulders. 

“Listen, Draco, you know I went into this marriage wanting two things: to make my mother happy, and to become a mother. My mother died believing the lie, and our son is the most beautiful, precious angel I’ve ever met.” She’d given his arm a squeeze before she continued in a soft, kind tone. “Your obligations towards me are over, you’ve fulfilled your half of the bargain. The only people you now have any obligations towards are yourself and Scorpius.” A dainty hand had come up to Draco’s chin, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You don’t have to be married to his mother to be a good father to Scorpius; to be perfectly frank, I’d prefer my son to have the example of someone who is happy and true to his heart, than a man who is hiding in a closet to please everyone but himself.” She’d sighed, her words almost apologetic. “At the end of the day, I’m aromantic and asexual; I have no desire to be in a relationship with anyone, so I can live my life exactly as I wish to whether or not I am legally married to you. I will happily keep this farce up, if that’s your choice, but honestly, I can’t see why you’d want to continue denying a part of yourself like this.”

The divorce had been relatively quick and easy, and Draco was surprised by both how little and how much it had changed. He and Astoria continued to coexist in the Manor, still found it easy to balance their schedules to share responsibility for Scorpius, and would always remain best friends and confidants. The difference now, was that on the nights when Astoria was looking after their son, he was free from all constraints, and for the first time in his adult life he could go out to bars and clubs and live the way any other person could. 

Having not even kissed a man since the few experimental common room dares of his adolescence, Draco found himself almost overwhelmed by the prospect of men who were genuinely interested in him, and who he was actually allowed to be interested in back. 

He quickly realised that entire process of flirting in a bar then moving elsewhere with obvious intentions was something he found incredibly awkward. It took surprisingly little time for him to go from denying any of his desires existed to admitting that what he truly wanted was not simply a body to spend the night with, but someone with whom he had an emotional connection, someone who wouldn’t leave in the morning, someone who wanted him even when he wasn’t dressed to the nines. He wanted a relationship. 

Entering the lift taking him to his new workplace, Draco tried to push aside all thoughts about the state of his life, and focus on the positive step he was taking. It was only at this moment, as the lift began to move, that it dawned on Draco that he was about to meet his new colleagues for the first time. He had met a couple in passing while in the interview and skill testing process, but as the training would be done alongside ‘real, on-the-job learning’, he hadn’t even met the other new Auror recruits, let alone the fully qualified Aurors. 

As the doors slowly slid open, Draco tried to hold onto his vain hope that they would like him, even as that little, annoying, oh so familiar voice in the back of his mind reminded him that he was a Death Eater, and that Harry Potter, the person who hated him the most out of anyone in the entire universe, was famously an incredible Auror, so even if the others didn’t hate him on sight, they would as soon as Potter poisoned them against him. 

Forcing himself to step out of the lift and into the Auror office, Draco tried to focus on his plan: first prove to the partner he was assigned to shadow that he wasn’t horrible or evil, then once he had won them over, attempt to make the rest of them not hate him. 

The plan Draco had taken so long to perfect, the one he had poured all his hope into and come to rely upon, was blasted apart faster than one could say _‘Confringo’ _. 

He stood in the Head Auror’s office, barely hearing the explanations about the image it would project to the outside world and how this was for the best. He wasn’t sure if it felt worse that it was coming from Granger, apparently the Ministry’s new head of ‘Wizarding community reunification and harmony’, or if it would always have felt like he had been played; the Ministry laughing at the former Death Eater thinking he could be allowed to change. 

The only slight consolation was that Potter looked just as miserable as Draco, though he combined it with fierce anger. Granger kept shooting him worried looks, even as she continued to ramble on with the ridiculous excuses. There was no explanation that Draco would accept, no reason he could reconcile except for the cold hard truth: the Ministry hated him, the universe hated him, and at this point he had even started to hate himself for daring to hope. 

He silently weighed his options. Running was the most appealing, but he had promised himself that his days of cowardice were over. He couldn’t throw a fit reminiscent of his childhood, because shouting and throwing things would only prove them all right. Yet again, Draco had no choice. 

The one advantage of having almost no pride left was that it made it easier to swallow, and that was exactly what Draco would do. He would keep his head down, work hard, and force himself to be nice to his former enemy and new Auror partner, Harry bloody Potter.

* * *

10th August, 2008

As Draco walked through the catastrophic remnants of the Scottish countryside, scouring the area like a hawk, his mind flicked involuntarily back to the start of this; back to the day they had been handed this case, back to a normal day in the office. The case had appeared normal and harmless - boring, even. How naïve they had been...

* * *

June 2008

“New case is on your desk. It’s another of these Muggles-noticing-magic ones, just the same old tripe. Nothing exciting, again.” Potter could quite easily have been auditioning for the role of petulant child, if his tone was anything to go by. 

“Weather? Do you mean sparks in the sky _etcetera _? Controlling the weather would require an awful lot of magical power… unless it’s a thunderbird?” Draco’s face creased into a frown as he considered. 

Potter rolled his eyes. “It’s just normal weather behaving strangely, nothing as fun as a thunderbird.”

Draco searched Potter’s face, trying to work out if he was seriously suggesting that a trafficked magical beast would be fun. Potter’s face remained set for all of five seconds before his lip wobbled, a clear sign that he was suppressing laughter. Sighing, Draco collapsed into his desk chair and set about reading through the hefty case file. 

It had started in Leeds; the Yorkshire winter disrupted by a single warm day, the sunshine feeling more like June than an otherwise bitterly cold February. Draco read every local and national newspaper headline, but they all said the same thing: temperature records had been broken, the sunshine shouldn’t have been so hot, and the scientists didn’t understand it.

Exactly a month had then gone by with no wayward weather, and the next event had largely flown under the national media’s radar because rural Cornwall rarely makes headlines, but the reports in local papers and online blogs made it clear that nature was not acting naturally. The wind had swirled this way and that, back and forth in a constant, erratically-changing mess. One sailor even claimed it had suddenly blown directly upwards, at one point. 

Draco was reading about the first weekend of the following month, when Potter interrupted. “Can you hurry up? I promised Gin I’d be home early. It’s simple; freak weather, dancing rain, blah blah blah.” 

It was all Draco could do to hide the illogical level of rage that pumped through his veins at Potter’s words. He wished he could just block the annoying voice out. 

“What are you even doing? Skim read the articles, or just pick one, they all say the same things!” Draco closed his eyes for a few long seconds, attempting to control his emotions, which currently felt a lot like the erratic weather. 

When he opened them, he had never been more pleased to be met by an interdepartmental memo. He unfolded the map of the British Isles, un-shrunk and solidified it, then began affixing symbols to the different places that had been targeted. 

Potter poked the raindrop Draco had placed over Newcastle to represent the dancing April showers that the city had experienced in the third monthly attack. “You learnt where Muggle cities are. Gold star for you Draco, well done, what a good little geographer you are.” 

Draco tried not to flinch as Potter nearly crushed the wave he had put over Brighton to symbolise the previous weekend’s odd ocean activity. 

Maybe it was petty, but that afternoon Draco deliberately made Harry late home to Ginny, by deciding they desperately needed to examine the timings of the incessant hailstorm that had stopped abruptly overnight, which just happened to require getting a Portkey across to Northern Ireland, as it had been Belfast targeted in the first weekend of May. With the time it took to arrange the travel, question the witnesses, survey the area, and return to the office, it was gone midnight by the time they both clocked out.

* * *

10th August 2008

Limping through broken branches and trying desperately to hold onto his hope, the most pessimistic part of Draco’s brain began to supply him with memories of the man he needed to find. He desperately missed Harry’s bitchy snarkiness, he missed his sarcasm, he even missed the things which drove him insane.

* * *

December 2006 - March 2007

Draco flinched at the thwacking sound of a pile of paperwork being dumped heavily onto the desk beside him. Closing his eyes and taking a long, deep breath, he yet again fought his natural instinct to shout. It had been a long week already, and it was only Wednesday. 

Potter was either trying to make Draco’s life miserable so that he would quit, or he was genuinely a massive dickhead. Draco was beginning to suspect that both may be true. In the two weeks since they had become partners, Potter had not said a single word to Draco that had not been a barked order or an insult. He wasn’t exactly charming to any of their other colleagues, but it was brutally clear that he hadn’t forgotten their schooldays. 

It didn’t help that the case they had been given was, in Potter’s eyes, menial, beneath him, and dull. Draco could sense his frustration as they collected witness statement after witness statement, each Muggle giving the exact same description of the missing giant Christmas tree, the same indignant assurance that it had suddenly disappeared, right in front of their eyes ‘_ as if by magic’, _with none of them giving any indication of other suspicious behaviour. 

It would have been a simple _Obliviate _and move on situation, only the tree was apparently an annual gift from Germany. The mysterious tree theft was on the front pages of all the papers in both countries by the time the Ministry had realised magic had actually been involved, and the German Wizarding Council were pressing for answers. 

Draco kept his eyes down as Potter began to speak; he’d learnt it was easier to resist punching his face if he couldn’t see it. 

“The Muggle police sent CCTV stills from just before and after the incident. And a couple from the week before, for comparison. Make yourself useful and play spot the difference, I imagine it’ll be great fun for someone of your intelligence level.” 

Potter walked off again with a snarl. Draco sighed, but pushed the witness statement he had been reading aside and began to look at the grainy images. 

When Potter came back, Draco was circling the fourth difference he had noticed on a copy of one of the stills. It was abruptly ripped from beneath his pen as soon as he lifted it. Draco took a deep breath and rubbed a finger along his cufflink, feeling the engraved texture of his son’s fingerprint and reminding himself to have patience. 

Potter grunted at the picture. “Huh. These look the same to me. Keep looking.” 

Draco stood and timidly pointed at one of the circles. “It’s very subtle, but if—” 

He was cut off by Potter tossing the picture back onto the desk. “Whatever. Unless you can see the Grinch or one of Father Christmas’s elves turned evil, I don’t care. This case belongs in a bloody storybook.”

Draco sunk into his seat once again, swallowed back his instinct to argue against Potter’s words, and wondered what in Salazar’s name a Grinch was. 

Two days later, Draco sat at his desk, tension bleeding down his spine, as it always did when Potter was at his own desk, right beside him. They had been silent for the past two hours, excepting only Potter’s persistent, increasingly loud and aggressive sighs. Draco hadn’t even realised a sigh could be aggressive, but Potter liked to defy the rules like that. 

Draco sensed Potter’s temper about to break mere seconds before he jumped up and started shouting. “I can’t deal with this! First they make me work with _you _and then they give us this ridiculous case, _who cares _about some stupid Christmas tree! They’ve already put another one up in its place for Merlin’s sake.” 

Draco didn’t react, just kept trying to connect the dots of the case, as he had been doing all morning. This only seemed to anger Potter more. 

“MALFOY! I’m talking to you! This is your fault! Or are you just too much of a prick to even look at me?” 

Draco finally raised his eyes. “You’re right, this is entirely my fault, obviously I vanished that Christmas tree myself. Oh no. I’ve been found out.” Potter looked stunned for a moment, before the edge of his mouth curled up very slightly. 

It was only a few minutes after Potter dropped back into his seat that he shuffled awkwardly closer to Draco and put a piece of paper in front of him. “I don’t understand this. It makes no sense.” 

Draco glanced from the paper to Potter’s uncharacteristically nervous expression. “Ah, so you’re asking me for help? You know, there’s actually a way to ask for that? You just say; ‘please Draco, would you mind helping me with this, when you get a moment?’”

The shock on Potter’s face made Draco laugh out loud, but he began to help - he’d just cracked the case, anyway. 

As Draco went through Potter’s query, he found himself feeling light and giddy; he couldn’t wait to arrest the smarmy, smug twat Finch-Fletchley for stealing the Christmas tree to decorate some big Muggle party his parents were hosting. He was even confident enough to laugh it off when Potter snidely commented about “posh pricks”. 

...

After three months of working together, Draco felt he had developed quite a good understanding of how Potter worked. He only rarely had his head bitten off, nowadays, and those were mostly on the times when he made the grave error of talking before Potter had finished his morning cup of tea, or when Draco hadn’t adequately assessed that Potter had eaten too little food and unsubtly offered him a snack, because a hungry Potter was an insufferably cranky Potter. 

It was a regular enough Tuesday, except that Scorpius had decided that throwing porridge at Papa was the funniest game ever, and cleaning the mess from his uniform had made Draco late. 

When he reached his desk, Potter was waiting with a grin. “Tut tut tut, what time do you call this! Have a late one last night, did you?” 

Draco rolled his eyes. “Yep, it was wild, I read _three _story books to Scorpius, and then I played Wizard’s chess with my ex-wife. I’m living the bachelor dream.”

Potter’s face crinkled into a frown, and Draco cursed himself for finding it cute and endearing, rather than infuriating like he used to. 

“Why did you get divorced, if you still spend all your time together?” 

Draco raised his eyebrows. “Don’t hold back with the questions, please, just ask anything.” 

Potter had the grace to look sheepish, and spun his chair around, busying himself with finding work as if that would hide his blush. 

Draco settled himself at his desk, and they were silent for a moment, before Potter turned to him with a rush of apologies; “sorry, that was… really out of line. I’m sorry. It-it’s none of my business, at all. Oh, god, I really am so sorry, I—”

Draco allowed him to suffer for a moment longer than he would most people, before he cut in. “I’m gay.” 

That shut him up. 

“What?” 

Draco looked directly into Potter’s incredible green eyes. “You heard me. I’m gay. That’s why I am no longer married to Astoria. What with her being a woman, and all.” 

Potter blinked once, twice, then he turned back to the stack of papers in front of him, picked up a quill and began fiddling with it. He had a light blush and almost seemed flustered. He cleared his throat, and spoke in a strained voice. “Right. Yeah, that makes sense.” 

Draco stared at him incredulously for a minute, before deciding to leave it, if Potter was going to act this weirdly. 

Potter acted strangely all day, he was quiet and didn’t give Draco any of their usual banter. He hadn’t gone back to being outright rude, but it was beginning to grate, and Draco felt himself growing more and more annoyed. 

It was late afternoon when he finally snapped. “OK, out with it. What is it about me being gay that offends you so much? I _know _you’re great mates with the Finnegan-Thomases, so I don’t understand how you could be homophobic, so it must be something else? Is it something particular about me? That I was married to a woman, is that what offends you? Because Astoria knew the situation going in, she agreed to everything, we never even had sex, so if it’s—” 

Potter held up both his hands in a gesture of surrender. “It’s not that. I’m sorry. Look, let’s take a break, get some coffee and I’ll explain?”

A few minutes later, they were in a homely, cosy café close to the Ministry that Draco had never noticed before, it was so small. Potter bought himself a large slice of sticky toffee cake, took a big bite, and then started speaking through the mouthful. “I don’t have—” 

Draco really, really wanted to be disgusted, but somehow he couldn’t find anything more than mild distaste, when normally he would be grossed out. “Swallow, Potter.” Another random blush, darker this time, graced Potter’s cheeks, and while it was certainly a good look, it was still completely inexplicable. 

Thankfully, he finished the bite before attempting to complete his sentence. “I don’t have a problem at all with you being gay. It’s more… I haven’t said this to anyone other than Gin, Ron and Hermione yet, so can you please not share this information? With anyone? Not even Astoria, or Scorpius?” 

Draco rolled his eyes. “Scorpius can barely express his desire to go to the park, I don’t imagine he’s the greatest threat to your secret, whatever it is. But, I promise.” 

Potter swallowed and scratched the back of his neck, leaving a long pause before he answered. “I think I might be bisexual, and when you came out to me, I felt like that meant I had to come out to you, like… I felt guilty because you had put that trust in me, and I hadn’t done the same back. And then I didn’t know how to act. Stupid, I know.” 

Whatever Draco had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t that. He waited to make sure Potter, who was now staring forlornly at his cake, had definitely finished speaking. 

“I really appreciate your confidence, but I’m sorry you felt obliged to share that with me when you weren’t ready; everyone works on their own time and my coming out to you did not in any way mean you had to come out to me. I can only apologise if I made you feel that way.”

Potter sighed. “You didn’t. I’m just a bit everywhere about it anyway.” 

Potter finished his cake obscenely quickly, it was almost as if he were worried Draco were about to steal it, his bites were so huge. Their conversation lapsed, until they were standing and making their way back to the office.

Potter exhaled his next words at speed, as if saying them faster would mean they had less impact. “So, this is another intrusive question, but it’s been on my mind since you said it, and curiosity killed the cat, and all that.” 

Draco raised an eyebrow. “Curious cats? The things you come out with…” 

Potter gave Draco a light shove with his shoulder. 

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but; you have a son... How did that happen if you’ve never had sex with Astoria?” 

Draco’s other eyebrow came up to meet the first, but he couldn’t resist smirking smugly at the nosy bastard. “Magic.” 

He was surprised by the volume of Potter’s answering laugh. “I deserved that!” 

Draco nodded. “You did. To be honest, I don’t actually know - Astoria gave me a cup, I filled it, and she did the rest.”

* * *

10th August, 2008

“Potter!” Draco shouted, wondering why he hadn’t thought to call out before. For a second, he thought he heard a reply; he stood stock still and strained his ears to listen, only to realise it was simply an echo of his own voice reverberating back at him. He tried again, and again, until his voice was hoarse and choked with tears.

* * *

September 2007

“Hey, do you fancy a celebratory pint?” Harry asked as they walked away from the cells where they had just detained the wandmakers whose creations slowly brainwashed their owners to perform increasingly severe curses. 

The question was said so casually, and yet it made Draco’s heart race like he had just flown a thousand miles. Proximity to Harry was becoming increasingly detrimental to Draco’s cardiovascular health; lately it seemed all the man needed to do was breathe and the pounding would start up in Draco’s chest. 

Where at first Draco had thought that Harry was a grumpy and unkind person, now he had begun to see that his behaviour was largely a reaction to the way others treated him. He was revered and idolised by their entire community, and Draco had learnt all the little tells that showed him just how awkward and anxious that made Harry, from the surly comments to the nervous neck-scratching. Draco got the sense that Harry actually like the way they constantly bickered, because it meant Draco saw him as equal, and their arguments had long since lost their anger and spite. 

Harry was still looking at him expectantly when they reached the doors to their office. Draco swallowed down his nerves and reminded himself that their tentative friendship was just that, and Harry’s invitation was nothing more than platonic. “Ye-yes. That would be nice. I’ll have to check Astoria will be OK with Scorpius, but...yes.” 

Harry shot a genuine grin at him and Draco’s insides did funny things. 

Over the course of the 5 minutes it took to fill in the most urgent pieces of paperwork, Draco’s nerves grew steadily, to the extent that his hand shook slightly on his quill as he signed the last of the forms. 

They were both uncharacteristically quiet as they made their way out of the office, and they had almost reached the atrium when Harry finally broke the silence. “So, was Astoria OK to look after Scor?” 

Draco narrowed his eyes. “He’s called Scorp_ ius _, and we live in Wiltshire, an owl wouldn’t have had time to get back yet, so I’m going to Floo call her in a second.” 

Harry shook his head slowly, his voice bemused. “I always forget how long magical communication can take. I don’t know what I’d do without my mobile!” 

He then pulled out a small black rectangle, which he opened at the middle to reveal a load of numbers, each lit up on a little square, and what looked like a mini, less clear version of the tevvinision thing the Muggles loved. He proudly held it out to show Draco, explaining how all he needed to do was press the little squares and another “phone” would ring and the person’s voice would come out of the square. 

Harry looked so ridiculously enthusiastic about the concept, and Draco was buzzing so much from the fact they were about to go out together on what may or may not be a date, that somehow he ended up bursting out laughing. The hysterics were met by a confused smile from Harry. 

“Hey! What’s so funny?” 

Draco tried to catch his breath enough to respond, but it was difficult through the laughter. “Your face! You’re so excited about a little talking box!” 

Harry shook his head, but he stayed smiling. “It’s useful!” 

Draco let out a giggle, then immediately felt embarrassed for sounding like a teenage girl. He tried to cover it up by decisively stating “it’s _ridiculous _”, but he wasn’t that successful, if Harry’s smirk was anything to go by. 

When they reached the Floos, Harry gestured towards them with his arm, a mocking grin plastered across his face. “Go on then, go stick your head in a fire to talk to your ex-wife, because that definitely isn’t a ridiculous method of communication.” 

Draco ignored the clearly sarcastic tone, primly agreed that “no, it is perfectly normal way to contact someone, thank you very much”, and went to speak to Astoria. 

After promising to tease him relentlessly about it later, Astoria confirmed she was happy to look after their son and waggled her eyebrows suggestively as she told Draco to have fun. He hoped Harry would assume he was red from the heat of the fire, but he headed straight for the doors once he’d stood up again, hoping that it would be less noticeable if all Harry could see was his back. 

It was only when he was about to leave the atrium, that he realised Harry hadn’t followed. He slowly walked back, confused at what on Earth was going through the man’s head to put that little frown on his face. 

“So… aren’t we going for a drink?” 

Harry nodded, his frown clearing. “Yeah. Yeah, we are. I take it you’re off the hook with parental duties, then? I wasn’t sure, the way you walked off, but yeah. A drink.” 

Draco felt a little bit sick that his attempt at exiting together had gone so badly, so he did the only thing he knew, and began to tease Harry. “Off the hook? Is this another one of your Muggle expressions? Don’t tell me where this one originates, I want to guess…” 

They were in fits of laughter by the time they spilled out onto the Muggle street, and the joyful smile made Harry look even more spectacular than usual, a freedom and excitement lighting his eyes like a child in Honeydukes. 

“Are you ok with a Muggle pub?” Harry scratched the back of his neck. “It’s just I find I don’t get recognised so much; it’s easier, you know?” 

Draco smiled, nodded, and tried fairly unsuccessfully to convince himself that Harry wanted to hide in the Muggle world because he hated being recognised, not because he couldn’t stand the thought of people thinking he associated with Draco when they weren’t forced together by work. 

The self-depreciative thoughts made Draco quieter, and surprisingly Harry picked up on that. “Are you sure Muggle is OK?” 

Draco swallowed and thought fast. “No, I’m happy to go... only... I've never been to a Muggle pub, so I’m not sure how they work… and I’ve only got I think fifty of their money… and I’m unsure what to order.” 

Harry’s grin almost seemed pleased, his eyes crinkling cutely at the sides in a sort of kind amusement. He threw an arm around Draco’s shoulder, which didn’t help to make Draco any less flustered than the smile had already done. “Awww Draco, you’ve come so far! Look at you worrying about fitting in in the Muggle world! I’m so proud!” 

Draco playfully shoved Harry’s side. “I hate you.” 

Harry just laughed, and pulled open the door to an establishment named “The Queen’s Arms”, which struck Draco as a rather odd name. 

Harry lead them through the wood panelled room, and chose a small table for two by a window. “So, what kind of drinks do you like? Wine, beer - though I should warn you Muggle beer is a lot more bitter and yeasty than butterbeer, or something like a cocktail? Those are normally sweeter and fruity?” 

Draco felt a little overwhelmed by the choice, and his voice came out humiliatingly quiet when he responded. “Um… fruity sounds good? Though preferably not too sweet…” 

Harry smiled. “Do you like passion fruit?” At Draco’s nod, the smile turned into a mischievous grin. “I know exactly what I’m getting you then!”

A few minutes later, Harry placed a bright yellow drink in front of Draco. It had half a passion fruit stuck bizarrely in the middle. Draco eyed Harry’s drink; it didn’t have any fruit floating in it, but it did fade between colours in an entirely disconcerting way, given that it was a Muggle drink. 

He pointed at his own cocktail. “Harry, what actually is this?” 

The answering smirk was in no way reassuring. “Pornstar martini”. 

Hearing those words fall from Harry’s mouth made Draco splutter, and he just _knew _his skin had turned crimson. 

Harry took a sip of his own drink, the ever-present and annoyingly attractive cheeky smile still playing on his lips as he watched Draco struggle to compose himself. 

“You just made that up to disconcert me, didn’t you? What’s it _actually _called? And what’s in it?” He could see the amusement in Harry’s eyes. 

“No, I’m serious, though I can’t deny that I’m enjoying seeing you all embarrassed. I can’t remember exactly what’s in it, maybe vodka? Some kind of alcohol, anyway, it’s passionfruity, you said you liked them… Try it!” 

Harry gestured towards Draco’s drink, something open and hopeful mixing with his mirth, and Draco couldn’t say no when faced with that expression. He took a sip. Harry hadn’t been lying about the presence of alcohol, but the taste of it complemented the sourness of the passionfruit perfectly. Harry was watching his reaction intently, and his face split into the biggest grin of the night so far when Draco told him “it's delicious.” 

Silence fell upon them for a second, both looking at their drinks.

“Alright then, what’s yours called?” Draco asked, reasoning that it couldn’t possibly be as bad as his cocktail’s name. 

“Sex on the beach.” 

He choked on his pornstar. “No, it isn’t! That’s not a drink name! That’s a.. actually, that’s an awful idea, doesn’t sand get… everywhere?” 

Harry’s shock was obvious; he was silent and open-mouthed for a whole second before he burst out into loud laughter that filled the whole pub with warmth. 

Their resulting conversation about appropriate locations for intimacy made them both laugh so hard that Draco got cramp and the hiccoughs, though the latter may partly have been caused by Harry saying the word “sex” far more times than Draco’s sanity could cope with. 

Draining the last of his cocktail, Harry gestured to Draco’s already empty glass. “Can I get you another?” 

The butterflies in Draco’s stomach that had been excited since they arrived turned their party into a full on rave at the thought that Harry was enjoying his company enough to stay for another drink. It sparked the little flame of hope and desire that Draco usually tried to extinguish, but right now, he let it burn. 

“I’ll get this round. Though I will hex you if the bartender tells me you made those names up.” 

Harry’s laughter carried all the way to the bar.

* * *

10th August 2008

Draco could only hope that the culprit didn’t strike again, not before he had found Harry and apparated them out. There was no way for him to call for reinforcements; he’d never successfully cast a Patronus, and he didn’t think he’d be able to find the exact location again, if he left and tried to come back. So, he had no choice but to keep blindly wandering around the area, wracking his brain for any clues that they had missed in this stupid case.

* * *

July - early August 2008

After the gigantic waves with distorted shapes that wrapped around Brighton Pier, everyone was on high alert for unnatural weather, but it was another month before a small earthquake was felt in the Brecon Beacons. That was the first time someone had been injured - a local Muggle woman with a strong Welsh accent recounted the ground moving while she was hiking up a peak she had climbed countless times, making her slip and break a leg. The air ambulance crew recalled with confusion having seen collapsed barns in only that one relatively small area, which while consistent with the other attacks, didn’t offer any new insight for the case. 

With actual harm now having been caused, the Ministry upped the priority of the case and the Aurors were gravely told that the culprit may be flexing their muscles for more serious attacks. 

The Unspeakables were sent to each area that had been targeted to scour their vicinities for traces of magic or foul play, but all they came back with were fragments of a magical signature that matched none on record. Draco diligently read their fifty-six page report, only to discover that their conclusions could have been summarised as two bullet points: the attacks had probably been carried out by the same perpetrator, and the suspect was likely human (though they couldn’t rule out part-humans such as werewolves). 

Potter suggested it could have been a group, all putting their magical energy together to create these weird quirks of weather, and that could explain why the magical signature was disrupted and unidentifiable. Draco scoffed at the suggestion, harshly snapping that maybe if Potter had paid more attention in school rather than riding on Granger’s coattails, he would have the basic understanding to know that _magic doesn’t work like that. _He would always remember the expression on Potter’s face; it matched the way he had looked the one time Draco had managed to hex him in a practice duel. 

On a pleasant Friday evening in the middle of July, Potter’s Patronus showed up in the Manor’s grounds where Draco was playing hide and seek with his son. He thought Potter was making fun of him at first, or that he was inviting him to some kind of gay bar or event. It was only when the stag appeared for the second time that he understood the message was referring to actual rainbows, as opposed to the LGBTQ+ pride symbol. A shiver ran through Draco as he realised the pattern had been broken, it wasn’t the first weekend of the month, and yet still a weather event was taking place. 

With Scorpius safely being babysat by his grandmother until Astoria returned, Draco apparated straight to the Birmingham address the stag had given him, and was immediately pounced upon by the sender of said Patronus. 

“Oh, look who’s finally decided to show up! Don’t worry Draco, it’s not like this is time sensitive at all, I’m glad you took your time in getting here.” 

The air between them had recently been crackly, and Potter’s acerbic comments were beginning to seem less like wit and more like undisguised insults. Draco spared a moment to scowl at the git, then flicked a stray hair from his eyes sassily, and spoke as pointedly as he could. 

“So I assume that while I was _arranging care for my son, _the great Harry Potter was forming a formidable plan of action and beginning to set it in motion?” 

That, at least, shut Potter up. 

A couple of Unspeakables had also been summoned to the scene, but even they were unable to determine the absolute source of the multiple rainbows which were bouncing around like one of those inflatable balls Draco had seen being thrown between Muggle children; they slowly drifted across the sky, then randomly changed direction and floated back to where they had come from. An entire city of Muggles watched on with obvious confusion, frequently commenting on the lack of rain and asking their friends if they’d ever heard of a rainbow forming on a day with such clear skies - and not just one but _so many _rainbows! 

It was only as the last traces of dusk left the sky and night was truly falling that the rainbows vanished from the sky as instantly as they had appeared. The Obliviators were deployed and the Aurors finally headed back to the office, entirely bewildered by the spectacle they had just witnessed. 

Contrary to the last attack, they couldn’t see any way in which a rainbow could be used maliciously. Yes, they had caused a large amount of inconvenience - Birmingham was one of the most populous cities in the country and there were thousands of Muggles to convince there had been a new phenomenon, but no one could possibly have been hurt by what had essentially been a pretty light show. 

Nevertheless, the department, and the Ministry as a whole, remained wary of this new bizarre threat, and it became the number one thing to discuss wherever anyone went, much to Draco’s annoyance. He’d spent months wishing he weren’t ignored so much, and now he began to wish he could go back to being as invisible as he had been before this ridiculous case. 

As the threat level was still undetermined-assumed-severe, the Aurors dispersed across the country for the first weekend of August, tuning in to Muggle radio and internet sites to track any abnormal weather as soon as it happened, but there was nothing. No trace of anything amiss for the entire weekend. From the Shetland Islands to Land’s End, all weather seemed to be acting completely normally - the whole country was covered in a dull grey blanket of cloud with occasional drizzly showers - completely to be expected for a weekend in August. 

Draco and Potter spent the next week searching through every local paper and publication they could find - Draco even got their counterparts in other European countries to send across copies of their local papers in case their suspect had gone international - but still they could not find anything amiss.

* * *

10th August 2008

Green, brown, and grey; leaves, branches and stones. All Draco could see was ‘what once was’. What once was a path, what once was a tree, what once was beautiful, what once was peaceful. 

He didn’t know how much time had passed. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Part of him was yearning to curl up, grimacing in pain and sorrow, but he had been a selfish coward before, and he was not going to make the same mistake again. Instead, he pressed on, still desperately scanning the area for signs of life, signs of Harry.

* * *

February 2008

Draco proudly added Scorpius’ drawing of a dinosaur to the divider between his desk and Harry’s, right beside the hot air balloon and the ‘cow’. It had been an incredible weekend; they had visited the Natural History Museum, and Scorpius had been all smiles. He couldn’t wait to tell Harry all about it; their banter had been becoming increasingly flirty of late, and Draco had stopped trying to deny that he was falling fast and hard for the idiot, birds-nest hair and all. 

Harry was late, quite typically, but very uncharacteristically he was positively beaming as he made his way through the office, waving hello to their colleagues and generally being _far _more cheerful than Draco had ever known him, particularly considering he hadn’t even had his morning tea yet. 

When he reached Draco, he grabbed his wrists and pulled him up, twirling him in his arms three times before he announced: “Ginny’s pregnant! I’m going to be a Dad again, we’re having a third baby!” 

Draco felt his heart plummet out of his stomach. He plastered on the biggest grin he could muster, and hoped that Harry was so deliriously happy that he wouldn’t see the way Draco’s heart was silently breaking behind it. 

Harry had said that they weren’t together anymore. He had given Draco this whole story about how they were together at school, how he would always love Ginny, but how that love had turned platonic and they had realised they weren’t meant to be together forever. On the night of Ron and Hermione’s wedding, they had made a “last tribute to what might have been”, and accidentally conceived James, and then had “deliberately made Albus”, because neither of them wanted James to grow up an only child. Draco had bristled slightly at that - he was an only child, and so was his son, but it followed the story Harry had spun, at least. This didn’t. 

It took Draco a moment to compose himself before he could get any words out. His reply was delayed and he could feel Harry’s eyes on him. 

“That’s amazing! I didn’t even realise you two were trying for a third. I’m happy for you.” 

Even to Draco’s own ears, his cheery tone sounded forced. Luckily, Alice, a sweet intern with a rather obvious crush on Harry, appeared at that moment, allowing Draco to escape the inevitable awkward conversation. 

The rest of the day was almost unbearably uncomfortable, at least for Draco. He thought at times that Harry was in such a euphoric daze that he was oblivious to Draco’s odd behaviour, but he did occasionally shoot him looks that suggested otherwise. 

Draco wanted to be genuinely pleased about something that obviously brought Harry a lot of joy, he really did, but he couldn’t hide all of the hurt that was destroying him. His emotions escaped in bizarre ways, a sharp tone here, a moment where he caught himself staring into space there. It took everything Draco had not to burst into tears in the middle of the office, as naturally, they were stuck at their desks doing paperwork with no chance of escape. 

When he finally reached home, he made a beeline for Scorpius, picked him up and hugged him until he started to wriggle to be put down. Astoria shot him a worried look, but he just shook his head once, kissed their son on the head and retreated to his own room, where he was finally able to let his tears fall. 

Not for the first time, Draco had been made to feel the fool by Harry bloody Potter. It was always Potter. He should have been used to it, by now, but this time felt new. This time, it hadn’t just been his dignity, his reputation and his pride that he had allowed Potter to destroy. This time it was his heart. How utterly idiotic he had been to allow himself to hope. He should have learnt by now to check himself, to be happy with his incredible son and kind best friend, and not to dream of things that he would never deserve. 

Draco was roused from his self-depreciation by a small hand tugging at the bedclothes near his head. Wide, blue-grey eyes peered up at him, an uncharacteristic frown marring Scorpius’ little face. 

“Papa sad.” 

He was normally such a bright, cheerful child, Draco felt a crushing guilt for causing his obvious worry. He scooped Scorpius up into his lap. 

“Yes, even Papas get sad and cry sometimes. But you know what makes me happy?” He tickled his son’s tummy. 

“What?” 

Draco smiled as the fit of giggles inevitably began. “You!”

* * *

10th August 2008 

A particularly large branch made Draco stumble onto the floor, and agony shot through his broken arm as it crashed against a rock. It took him a moment to realise the strangled cry echoing through the empty air was his own. His face was warm where tears had begun to stream from his eyes, but he blinked to clear them; he needed to see properly to find Harry.

* * *

9th August 2008

Draco was greatly relieved that the weekend had arrived at last; Astoria was finally back from her holiday, and he had planned to take full advantage of being able to catch a couple of hours to himself without having to worry about the welfare of his gorgeous but rather energy draining toddler. 

At exactly 4.03am on Saturday morning, his weekend plans and sleep were both abruptly interrupted by Scorpius screaming. Friday night had been a raucous affair that Draco blamed entirely on Pansy, and he couldn’t tell if the noise assaulting his ears was actually that loud, or if he had simply drunk more than he had thought. When, a second later, a fully dressed Auror, who Draco only vaguely recognised, appeared in his doorway, the intoxicated theory began to make more sense than reality.

It turned out that Proudlove, a junior Auror who was on the night shift, and was apparently competing with Potter for the biggest-idiot-on-the-force award, had used the Head Auror’s Floo to barge into the Manor in the middle of the night. He had then stumbled into Scorpius’ bedroom and given him the most terrifying wake-up of his life, before managing to find the correct room to let Draco know it had snowed in a rural part of the Scottish Highlands. 

Once they were in the office, and Proudlove had been intimidated to the point where he was physically shaking so Draco was relatively sure he wouldn’t repeat his mistakes, Draco set about owling Potter. It would take a little time for the bird to deliver the letter, but Potter didn’t live too far away, Draco had long since given up on learning the Patronus charm, and _he _knew that even a Floo _call _in the middle of the night was not socially acceptable, let alone casually letting yourself into someone else’s home. 

By the time Potter made it into the office, looking dishevelled and altogether more attractive than any man had the right to be before 5am, their boss had come and gone, leaving Draco with the joyful task of informing his partner that they would be taking a Portkey to the middle of nowhere and staying there “for the foreseeable”. 

Potter’s reaction was about as good as Draco had predicted. “What? He gave no end date? We just have to go to some mountainous wasteland and wait for it to stop unseasonably snowing? Is it even that unlikely?” He collapsed stroppily into a nearby chair with a clatter. “Surely this could just be actual nature, it always was bloody freezing at school, so why shouldn’t it be snowing there in August?” 

Draco couldn’t help himself, the sarcastic response fell from his lips almost of its own accord. “Of course, you’re right, if you say this is normal for the Scottish climate, you must be right. Never mind that snow has never previously been recorded falling in August - if our Saviour, the man-who-lived-twice, says it’s normal, clearly the experts are all just wrong.” 

Potter’s answering scowl gave Draco a sick sense of satisfaction.

Proudlove had been put in charge of creating the Portkey, because apparently there were no competent people about, and he had very sensibly chosen an old button “so it could easily be shoved in a pocket”. What the beetle-brain hadn’t considered, was that in order for two of them to be touching the tiny button at once, they would have to be touching each other, too. He shrugged at Draco’s complaint and wandered off, leaving an awkward silence in his wake. 

After an uncomfortable pause, in which Draco wished vanishing spells worked on oneself, Potter grabbed Draco’s hand and shoved the button into a small gap where their fingers met. Draco purposefully looked anywhere but at Potter, his face heating as he realised how nice Potter’s warm hand felt against his own, how his grip was somehow both secure and gentle, how much he wanted to trace the roughness, to learn every contour. 

As the Portkey began to vibrate between their palms, Draco could feel Potter’s eyes on him. It took everything he had not to crack and take a peek at the expression on his face, but he knew that if what he saw was disgust, or worse, indifference, it would crush the part of his heart he had callously given to a man who had never wanted it, the part Draco knew he’d never get back. 

The Portkey landed them in the middle of a field. Considering the report of snow had only come in an hour previously, they were both surprised to discover that the snow had apparently stopped. Their feet crunched underfoot as they made their way towards a small village they could just make out on the horizon. 

Draco’s impermeable charm wore off after a mere five steps, and cold, wet, melted snow began to seep into his shoes, freezing his toes. They’d both transfigured their robes into Muggle-worthy clothes, but Draco’s casual hoody, jeans and trainers were clearly not designed for this weather. They had barely made it any distance before Draco was grumpy beyond belief. 

“Alright, wanker. How the fuck do Muggles deal with this cold? My feet are soaked and this stupid jumper is letting all the cold in. What are those things you’re wearing? Are they Muggle?” 

Potter stopped in his tracks and turned to him. “Hey, Harry, I’m finding it a little chilly with my ridiculously inappropriate attire. Would you mind sharing some of your far superior wisdom and helping me to transfigure my clothes into something a little warmer? Why, of course, I’d be happy to help you, Draco, especially seeing as you asked so nicely and politely.” His smirk only made Draco more irate. 

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.” 

The idiot’s smile widened at that. “Well it’s definitely funnier than freezing to death because you’re too proud to ask for help!” 

Would Draco be fired if he punched the git? Yes, he definitely would. He attempted to grit his teeth (though this was a challenge given the amount they were chattering) and he ground out a more polite request for Potter to use his stupid Muggle knowledge and transfigure his clothes. 

The second he felt Potter’s magic transforming his outfit into something warmer, Draco regretted having allowed him to make the changes. He couldn’t tell if it was all in his mind, but he could swear that there was something distinctly Harry now woven into the fabric of the thick winter jacket, the almost comically large gloves and the— 

“Are these… are these shoes made of _plastic _???” 

Potter grinned. “Yep! Technically they’re boots, welly boots!” 

The pillock had finally gone mad. 

“More like wally boots…,” Draco muttered under his breath, staring grumpily at the hideous but admittedly waterproof boots. 

Unfortunately, Potter heard the words, and instantly took exception to them. 

“Welly, short for Wellington. Like the duke or whatever, I’d have thought you were posh enough to know that. Or is it only magical poshness you speak?” he sniped. “And you really do give a masterclass in gratitude. Here’s a new word for you: ‘thanks’, maybe you could add that to your vocabulary, too?” 

Draco was not in the mood for what Potter had previously termed “teasing banter”, so he increased his pace and stormed towards the buildings. By the time Potter caught up with him, he had already established that there was not a single person to be seen in the tiny village, which consisted of a whole twenty-three houses, a bus stop, and a shady looking pub. Whoever had informed the Aurors of the bizarre snowfall had obviously already scarpered, leaving them with absolutely no leads. Draco collapsed onto a bench facing the small village green, staring at his watch as if doing so would make time speed up. 

“Great work, I’m sure you’ll catch all the criminals sat on your lardy arse!” Potter called to him. 

“Excuse me? My arse is pert and firm, not lardy, thank you very much. And what else do you propose we do?” 

Potter’s face went an interesting shade of red at Draco’s words, presumably due to his angry frustration at the realisation they were now stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do. “Hmph. Well _I’m _going to scout the perimeter of the snowy area to see if I can find any extra clues.” 

Draco watched Potter stomp away, then reluctantly set off in the opposite direction. He knew Potter’s grumpiness was his own fault; he himself had been cold, unkind, and rude to him ever since his little announcement, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Every time he tried to be mature about the situation and to forget about his hurt, he would find himself saying something even harsher and more biting. 

The blanket of snow appeared to be an almost perfect circle, covering a surprisingly large amount of ground. Draco walked around the entire circumference without spotting Potter once, which was somewhere between a relief and a disappointment. 

The snow began to fall again at almost exactly 7am, making an odd spectacle from the edge of the snowy area, with heavy snowflakes floating down on one side of an invisible line, while on the other side it remained distinctly summery. Draco stepped into the sunshine and bathed in the warmth of it, until he began to feel guilty for not working, and he trudged back towards the village. A car rolled past, but Draco didn’t understand the etiquette for making driving Muggles stop, or even if the big machines were able to stop at short notice, so he helplessly watched it leave without sharing any information that could help the case. The rest of the village was silent, and Draco wasn’t sure how to question Muggles without someone who understood them by his side, so he ended up back on the bench, waiting for something to jump out at him and make sense of this bizarre snowfall. 

He was still there 45 minutes later when Potter found him, only by that time even his best warming charms had failed, and he was beginning to worry about the fate of his frozen toes. Naturally, the person he blamed for this was the messy-haired moron in front of him. 

“Where the hell have you been? We’re supposed to be partners, we’re supposed to work together, and you just buggered off, for hours!” 

Potter ignored the jibes. 

“I’ve been in the pub. The—” 

Draco was incensed. “The pub! The pub! Honestly, it’s barely 8 in the morning and you’re _drinking _already? And we’re at work!” 

Potter closed his eyes and plastered on an oversized fake smile. “The landlady has been giving me her account of recent weather. I just came to look for you because they do breakfast, and I didn’t want to be rude and eat without you. If you’re too high and mighty to enter a pub at this time in the morning, go hungry. I don’t care.” He flounced off in the direction he had come without a backwards glance at Draco.

* * *

10th August 2008 

The bright sunshine felt out of place, it was a strange juxtaposition with the scene filled with obliterated pines, their broken branches swaying pitifully in the very light breeze. It got in Draco’s eyes and made him squint, the heat uncomfortably mixing with his water-logged clothing, making his skin sweat and itch. He couldn’t care about that, though. The discomfort was nothing, the pain in his arm was nothing, _he _was nothing if he didn’t find Harry, and find him alive.

* * *

9th August 2008

The pub landlady was a kindly, middle-aged woman who reminded Draco quite strikingly of Weasley’s mother, despite her dark complexion. Maybe that was the reason Potter looked so at home sat before her at the bar, or maybe it was simply that everyone loved the bastard. Draco couldn’t blame them, but that didn’t mean he liked it. The way he was sat on the barstool, leaning against the wooden counter, gave Draco a delicious view of his long spine curving down towards that incredible arse. He caught himself staring and swore inwardly at the part of his brain that didn’t seem to understand the words ‘no, he’s taken_ . _’

He was considering turning around, rather than subject himself to the inevitable torture that would be talking to Potter while he looked like that, but the landlady caught sight of him and called him over before he could subtly escape. Potter gave him a grin that seemed far too genuine, and raised his mug of steaming tea in greeting. “Draco! Decided to have breakfast after all, did you?” 

Draco grunted. 

The landlady, Pippa, was just as fussy as Draco had imagined, and she kept up a steady stream of chatter while she took Draco’s coat and began laying a table for two. “...telling Harry here…most odd...there wasn’t a snowflake to be seen when I went to pick Lydia up from the station…never seen anything like it…terrible for the flowers…” 

She was about to bustle away when Draco suddenly realised his feet were still dripping with melted snow, no house elf having cleaned them. 

“Should I take off Wellington’s boots, too?” 

Bizarrely, the landlady began to chuckle. Draco turned to Potter for support, only to find him biting back a laugh. 

“Excuse him, he’s a city boy. Not quite used to the countryside yet, are you, Draco?” 

The mirth in Potter’s eyes wasn’t cruel, as Draco expected, it almost appeared fond and affectionate, and even though he wasn't sure why he was being laughed at, that look alone made Draco feel lightheaded and happy.

Once the landlady had stopped chortling, assured him he was fine to leave his shoes on, and left to prepare their breakfasts, Potter urgently told him that he’d said they were “meteorologists” studying the situation and that he’d managed to establish that the weather was normal at about 9.20pm when the landlady had arrived home with a family friend. 

They were told that no one would be about in the village to speak to them until much later, so Harry and Draco set themselves up at a table by the window, all of their research spread out under a few careful charms to make them look like Muggle meteorologist papers. The snow continued to fall on the other side of the glass as the hours rolled on. There were occasional times when the snowfall almost ended, but just as the last flakes settled, it would start up again, making them doubt whether it had ever really stopped. 

Around 11am, a teenager with curly, mousy brown hair approached them and begged to see their “weather stuff”. When they denied her the chance, she looked so disappointed that Draco felt guilty. She sadly told them that there was nothing to do out here, and began asking them to go outside and make snowmen or have a snowball fight, but her pleas were interrupted by the landlady, who chided her for annoying the guests and sent her away before they could question her on what she had seen. 

As the hours passed, the depth of the snow outside only increased. Villagers came and went, but none of them offered any insight into what was causing the snow. Mabel, who Draco mistook for Professor Trelawney when she first walked into the pub because she was wearing so many shawls, was concerned because her cats didn’t like the snow. David, a bumbling older gentleman with kind eyes, was bewildered that winter had arrived so soon and confused about the date. And Doris, a woman so frail-looking Draco worried she’d slip and break a hip on the ice, just wanted to have a chat. 

They got sidetracked discussing the joys of parenthood when Mike and Bessie came in, but they did manage to establish that it hadn’t been snowing any of the times they got up to tend to their baby during the night, though they couldn’t say if there had already been snow on the ground or not. 

At just gone 7pm, a hardened farmer collapsed onto a barstool complaining in a very thick Scottish accent about his poor “lassies” being too cold, and they eventually worked out that it had been him who had informed the Aurors of the snow via his local radio station, when he woke at 4am to milk “the lassies”, otherwise known as cows. 

As the sky grew darker, the snow showed no signs of letting up. Proudlove, who Draco should really have learnt not to trust, had assured him that the village inn had two rooms that could be let overnight if they hadn’t solved the mystery by then. Unfortunately, Proudlove, in his infinite wisdom, had not considered that one of the rooms may already be occupied. The landlady apologised as she served up their third delicious home-cooked meal of the day, and explained that Lydia, the teenager who they had met earlier, was occupying one of the rooms, so she only had one double available for the night. She glanced between them, her expression unreadable, and said she’d be at the bar if they’d like to check in. 

They ate in tense silence. Draco kept sneaking glances at Potter, trying to work out where his head was at; whether or not he was disgusted by the concept of them sharing a bed. Once, he looked up from his food to find Potter’s stunning green eyes looking at him, and twice he was caught staring at Potter, but when that happened they both darted their gazes back to their suppers, afraid of what the other’s face would show. 

Eventually, Draco grew tired of whatever it was they were doing, and decided to be the mature adult in the situation. 

“I’ll just—”

“It’s no big—”

He looked up when Potter began speaking at exactly the same time. They did an awkward dance of hand gestures and opening then closing mouths, both directing the other to speak, which ended with Draco giving up first and actually talking. 

“I’ll just sleep on the floor. I’m not bad at cushioning and warming charms.” 

Potter’s face held an odd expression; Draco would almost have thought him disappointed, but that didn’t make any sense. 

Potter cleared his throat, a light blush dusting his cheekbones. “No, Draco, that’s ridiculous. Why don’t we share the bed? Or, if not, I’ll sleep on the floor, I’m sure I’m far more accustomed to falling asleep in non-luxurious places than you are.” 

Potter’s voice held a note of something that sounded like bitterness, which confused Draco as much as it made him determined to make the man have a comfortable place to rest. 

Their conversation was stilted for the rest of the evening, both having apparently forgotten how to interact with the other. They stuck to the very safe topic of the case, only straying once to note that it was their children’s bedtimes and that they were sad to be missing them. Draco deliberately avoided bringing up Astoria and was relieved when Ginny wasn’t mentioned. Discussing nothing but the investigation didn’t help progress it at all; they had already gone over everything what felt like four thousand times, and no amount of rewording or rehashing would magically make the problem be solved. 

When the time came for the landlady to show them the room, the atmosphere was so quiet that Draco was sure the others would be able to hear the fast, heavy rhythm his heart was beating. The room was small and plain, but at least it was clean and functional. When the door swung closed behind the retreating landlady, Potter and Draco stood on opposite sides of the bed, staring nervously at each other. Neither had expected to stay the night when they had left their homes that morning, so they were left to make do with transfiguration to create adequate nightwear. 

The tension became too much for Draco, and he finally allowed himself to run, if only to the bathroom. He managed to get the shower to work (admittedly with the aid of a temperature control charm - the damned thing only seemed to want to be boiling or icy), and he tried to imagine that he was washing away all his feelings for Harry, rather than just the day. He pushed his face under the spray and let the falling water massage the muscles that had been on edge for hours because of Harry’s close proximity. 

To Draco, he became Harry, rather than Potter, only in private moments like this. Everywhere else, Draco stuck to the impersonality of Potter’s surname, even in his internal monologue. There had been a time when he had allowed the name Harry to creep in elsewhere, but no, he needed to remind himself to keep his distance, to prevent his mind from tricking him into thinking they could be something that was impossible. 

When Draco finally gathered the mental strength to return to the hotel room, he found Potter wearing a ridiculous excuse for pyjamas. His face flushed and he shifted from foot to foot beside the bed when he saw Draco, which only attracted more attention towards the vast expanses of leg his boxer shorts exposed. Draco knew he must look as if every drop of his blood had taken up residence in his face, but hopefully that distracted from the portion which was quickly rushing elsewhere. 

Harry scratched the back of his neck and fiddled with his wand. “Sorry. Erm. I normally just sleep in something like this. I can try to transfigure something like yours instead, I definitely can’t do something that neat and…silky, bu—” 

Draco shook his head, sitting down on the edge of the bed so he had his back to Potter. “It’s fine, Potter. Wear what you find comfortable.” He hoped his voice wasn’t as strained as it sounded to his own ears. 

Silence fell over the room, not even disturbed by the sound of clothes and bedsheets rustling. He chanced a look over his shoulder at Potter, only to find he hadn’t moved from his position standing by the bed. 

“You used to call me Harry.” 

Draco looked up into brilliant green eyes, but the vulnerability and devastation he saw there made him look away quickly. What was that about? He didn’t know how to respond to that, so instead he ignored the words, lifted the covers and slid awkwardly into the bed. 

Potter cleared his throat, and his words sounded professional once again. “The snow stopped while you were in the bathroom. From the reports we’ve heard today, it seems this is consistent with what happened last night. I’ve set up weather monitoring charms, which will alert us if anything changes, including if it snows again. So—” he drew a deep breath, held it for a second before saying the next words on an exhale, “we can sleep.” 

A few moments later, the bed dipped behind Draco as Potter climbed in. Draco had curled up on his side, facing out towards the wall. His hope that he would be able to trick himself into thinking that it was anyone but Potter lying beside him was shattered with the first hints of the very unique ‘Harry’ smell that drifted over him, and he was sure he could feel the magic faintly pulsing from the body now almost so close that they were touching. Almost, but not quite. There was the sound of glasses being set onto the bedside table, a whispered ‘_ Nox _’ to turn out the light, then nothing but their breathing and the rapid _thump thump thump _of Draco’s heartbeat. 

Draco felt like he had been lying there for hours, frozen in place for fear of touching Potter. His pulse hadn’t slowed in all that time, and he was sure he would be tetchy and anxious the following day due to having spent the night as a nervous wreck rather than asleep, but there was nothing he could do about it. He listened to the sound of Potter breathing and wondered if he too were lying awake, then silently laughed at himself. Of course Potter wasn’t affected by their proximity - why would he be, he was with Ginny, and that was that.

* * *

10th August 2008

As time drew on with still no sign of Harry, the voice in the back of his mind that Draco had been trying his best to ignore only became louder. Harry was a father, and Draco thought of his sons, out there somewhere, completely unaware that their father was missing. Ginny was pregnant. Would Harry ever get the chance to mee— Draco abruptly stopped walking and shook his head violently to clear away the unthinkable thoughts filling his mind. No. He would not allow himself to think like that. No. 

The aggressive movement had jarred his broken arm, filling Draco with a wave of agony so intense that it clouded his vision and disoriented him. Carefully, he widened his stance and bent his head down between his legs in an attempt to stop the overwhelming dizziness. He closed his eyes and took two deep breaths, but when he opened them, he was still seeing stars - a bright light shone straight into his eyes, it was like looking straight into the sun, or at least a tiny part of it, like a reflection on a mirror, or a piece of glass…

* * *

10th August 2008 - morning 

The sun was streaming through the window when Draco awoke. In his drowsy daze, it took him a moment to realise that the warmth surrounding his body came not from the duvet but another body, and a further second to realise that said body belonged to none other than Potter. A possessive arm wrapped around his middle and hot puffs of air were tickling the back of his neck where Potter’s face was buried against it. Draco couldn’t help the shiver that ran down his spine when he felt the way Potter’s lean, hard body was pressed up against his back, so closely that he could feel every contour, every enticing part of the man he never thought he’d be allowed to touch. 

Potter stirred at Draco’s involuntary movement, his arm holding Draco even closer to his warm chest. “Mmngh…mmuhhh…hhurhhh, whasssat noise?” 

The words were said into Draco’s neck; the way Potter’s lips moved felt like kisses, the sound vibrated through Draco in a way that did nothing to help the breathless arousal that would surely be the death of him. 

It was only as the meaning of the sentence sunk in that Draco realised there was a dull buzzing coming from behind them. Reluctantly, Draco opened his eyes, putting an end to the fantasy of a world where mornings looked like this, which had begun to play out in his mind. Potter wasn’t aware of his actions. The world didn’t, and never would, look like that. As the sound originated from behind them, Draco having opened his eyes didn’t shed any light on what was causing the din. He debated moving, but he found he was too weak-minded to do so when there was still a hand pressing brilliantly into his chest. 

After long moments where Draco wished he were the kind of man who could leave the arms of his unrequited love, Potter seemed to wake up fully, and he rolled away, leaving Draco frozen in place - cold where seconds previously he had been burning hot. 

“It’s the weather.” There was a pause, and Draco felt the mattress shift as Potter moved. “The charm. It’s probably snowing again.” A scrabbling around for glasses was followed by soft footsteps over to the window. “Yep. Snowing. Great. Better get ready.” Potter then hastily disappeared into the bathroom. 

Draco laid on the bed, feeling hot all over and not at all ready to face the day. He very nearly bowed to the urge to release some of the energy that Potter had built up within him, but he resisted and shot a charm at himself as a last ditch attempt to get his body to listen to the constant rhetoric that Potter was unavailable, he was with the mother of his children and there was no way Draco wanted to become a homewrecker - not that Potter would ever see him in that way, anyway. He rose and reverse-transfigured his clothes into the outfit Potter had styled for him the previous day, regretting that the tingle of magic in them now felt entirely his own. 

Both of them acted as if they hadn’t woken up wrapped around each other when Potter shuffled back into the room and awkwardly asked if Draco was ready to go down for breakfast, his face still flushed from the heat of the shower. 

Downstairs, they were greeted by the teenager from yesterday, who pounced on them as soon as they reached the lower floor. 

“Hi! Are you doing any more weather watching today? It’s still snowing! Please could I come with you? This place doesn’t have any internet and Pippa says she’s going to be busy all day. Please?” There was a desperation in her voice that she was clearly trying to hide with eager enthusiasm, and her cheerful smile didn’t quite mask the pleading in her eyes. 

Potter was looking at the girl in a way that made Draco uncomfortable, there was a strange kind of sadness mixed with the sympathy written across his face. 

Draco was trying to think of a reason why she couldn’t join them that would be convincing to a Muggle, seeing as Potter clearly wasn’t going to speak (Draco secretly wished they could just confound her, but figured that wouldn’t go down well), when the landlady appeared.

“Stop pestering our guests, Lydia! Go play in the snow, or read a book - do something fun!” 

Lydia swiftly grabbed a copy of “The Wizard of Oz” from a nearby table and hid her face in it, but Draco still caught her dejected look, and felt even more guilty about not allowing her to join them, though they certainly weren’t having fun. 

Throughout breakfast, Potter continued to completely ignore the fact that he’d wrapped himself around Draco while asleep. It seemed so unfair that while Draco couldn’t get it out of his head, Potter was entirely unaffected and completely oblivious to the competition between desire and despair going on in Draco’s mind. 

The more Potter chattered away about the stupid case, the more agitated and irate Draco became. Why was this his life? Surely the bad karma should have worn off by now? He managed to hold it together while their plates were cleared, and for another half an hour in which Potter continued to try to press the case to a close, despite there being absolutely no leads. Draco kept everything inside because he had to, because Lydia, still reading her book in the corner, kept slyly looking at them, and because he had to hide the true source of his emotions. 

When Potter began trying to play dot-to-dot between the targeted areas, as if this whole thing had just been someone drawing a giant dick over Britain, and at the same time Lydia slapped her book down and flounced out of the door, leaving them alone, Draco snapped. 

“Stop! Just stop. OK? I cannot deal with you and your ‘oh we’ll solve the case quickly because I’m Harry Potter and I’m the luckiest bastard in the world and everything comes easily to me even though I make my stupid Death Eater colleague do all the actual nitty gritty work because that’s beneath me’.” Draco took a deep breath and noticed with satisfaction the look of total shock he had caused. 

Potter’s eyes held hurt, even as he argued. “I can’t see you doing any nitty gritty work this morning! Is it really so wrong that I want to solve the case? It is sort of _our job _to solve these things, you know?” 

Draco let out an exaggerated sigh. “Yes! I know, but we don’t have enough evidence to give us any reasonable leads yet, so what’s the point? We’ve been over everything forty five thousand times already!” 

Potter blinked. “It’s been months, maybe there’s something we miss—” 

Draco felt like his anger was about to explode out of him, as if it were an entity of its own that needed to escape. “Going over it all again isn’t going to help! You just want us to solve the case so you can get home to your precious little Ginny and get away from me!” 

Draco took one more look at Potter’s annoyingly dumbfounded expression, and found he couldn’t stand the sight for one second longer. Grappling his coat from the hook, he made his best attempt at storming out of the building, though the ridiculously ill-fitting boots made it difficult. 

Draco stomped through the snow, the crunch of it beneath his feet a satisfying accompaniment to his internal monologue, which continued to rant the angry words he wanted to say to Potter but couldn’t. The thud of a door closing sounded behind him, and Draco rolled his eyes - of course the dimwit had followed him when it was clear he didn’t want to be followed. 

“Draco!” 

If Potter thought that calling out his name would make him turn around, he had another thing coming. On, he marched, almost blind with fury and the bitter sting of unrequited love. 

“DRACO!” 

The wanker was shouting now, he sounded further away though, at least. 

“Draco, please?” 

Not even the pleading tone would make him look back, he wasn’t going to give Potter that satisfaction.

His conviction lasted all of five minutes, at which point he grew curious as to whether he was still being followed. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, then turned abruptly and looked around, noticing his surroundings for the first time. He had been in such a rage, the steam-like clouds that rose from the ground had completely passed him by, but now he saw them. Potter was nowhere to be seen; the only things breaking through the swirling fog were the tree trunks which stood tall, their branches stirring as the snow upon them slowly disappeared. 

As Draco kept moving, slower now, a light wind began to pick up. The sound of leaves rustling gradually increased, making the desperate cry of “DRACO! DRACO! DRACO!” sound muffled, but he heard it - heard the agonised tone. Spinning on the spot, he looked around for Harry. He still couldn’t see him, but what he did see and hear was terrifying. The sound of the harsh wind rushed in his ears as he ran from the twisting column of debris and broken branches. He reached a loch, and he was stuck, he had no time to think as the hurricane reached him and he found himself completely at its mercy.

* * *

10th August 2008 

All traces of pain-induced nausea forgotten, but still in the fairly awkward legs splayed, head upside-down position, Draco squinted his eyes to try to get a better look at the glint of _something _he had spotted. There was something there, there had to be, even if all he could see was that blinding little reflected beam of light. 

With a groan, Draco heaved himself up to his full height, turned, and began to walk towards where he had seen the light. From this angle, he only caught occasional flashes that were easy to discount, but he was sure of what he had seen. This area had truly taken a beating, and he had to use his good hand to steady himself as he struggled to clamber over the huge trunks of uprooted trees. 

As he drew closer, Draco began frantically looking out for something, anything, that wasn’t a destroyed part of the forest. 

And then he saw it. 

Peeking out between two severed branches, was an almost perfect circle of glass. He scrambled to get closer, his stomach churning and his heart plummeting. He would recognise that size and shape anywhere. Sure enough, when he got closer, Draco could make out the frame around the glass, the smashed second lens, and the wonkily bent arms of Harry’s glasses. 

He had been scared before, but now the terror truly engulfed him. Seeing Harry’s mangled glasses made it tangible and real in a way that it somehow hadn’t quite been before. The urge to break down and sob was stronger than ever, and Draco’s whole body shook with the force of his emotions. 

He swallowed deeply and began to frantically search the area around the spot where the glasses had landed, sure that their owner would be nearby, but terrified of finding him in the same state as his glasses. 

A few metres away lay an ancient, massive Scots Pine, its expansive fallen canopy covering a huge area, branches and leaves rising from their places on the floor to well above Draco’s height. It took very little time for Draco’s heartbeat to reach his throat, the heavy pounding like a choking force, as it hit him that Harry could be somewhere under that mess of wood and leaf. 

Not for the first time, Draco thanked Merlin for magic, as he very carefully levitated branch by branch away from the pile. He quickly worked up a sweat, and he found it hard to keep his wand steady enough, but he pushed himself past his normal limits to get the tree moved as fast as possible, his desperation to find Harry, or maybe prove he wasn’t under all these sharp, heavy, broken bits of tree, spurring him on. 

He was so intent on his task, that Draco didn’t notice at first. It was only when he lifted a particularly large branch, revealing the entire of Harry’s torso, that he realised one of his legs had been visible for a few moments. In an intense mix of frantic panic and extreme caution so as to avoid injuring him further, Draco cleared the detritus covering the rest of Harry’s body and that handsome, infuriating face. 

One look at the torn clothing, the broken skin and smeared blood, and Draco had to spin around to avoid vomiting all over the body of the man he loved. Wiping his mouth, he tried to focus on what he needed to do. Draco turned back and cast the spell he’d been taught in his first week as an Auror to check for vital signs of life. His relief hit him with the force of a _Stupefy _when it showed Harry was alive, but that relief was quickly replaced by more panic and anxiety when he realised that the heartbeat was fainter than usual, the spell callously informing him that he didn’t have much time, that he had almost been too late, that the pressure was still sky high. 

Hurriedly, Draco cast a spell to keep Harry’s body in position, so that no further damage would be done while they apparated, and then he took his scarily chilled hand and focused as hard on Destination, Determination and Deliberation as he ever had. 

When Draco opened his eyes, they were still in the exact same location, rather than in the entrance to St Mungo’s as he’d intended. He blew out a shuddering breath, closed his eyes, and tried again. This time, he felt it. That tiny echo of magic that bounced back and told him they were in an area covered by anti-apparition wards. He could remove them, but that would take 30 minutes and time was a luxury he didn’t have. 

Draco’s string of expletives filled the whole area as he yelled in frustration, terror and fury. He couldn’t get Harry out. He was powerless, helpless to do anything but watch the only man he had ever loved die from a ridiculous weather event. The sobs that wracked through Draco’s body were near suffocating as he moved to kneel beside Harry, not caring about the way the splintered wood beneath him cut his knees. 

He stroked Harry’s face, letting his hand run down over his chest to feel it weakly rising and falling with Harry’s every breath. Tracing his eyes over the damage to Harry’s body, Draco’s gaze caught on a strange protrusion in the jacket close to his own hand on Harry’s chest. Moving to touch the lump, his trembling fingers connected with a solid rectangular shape that he quickly realised was inside a pocket. Pulling it out, Draco recognised the talking box Harry had announced could speak to Ginny.

* * *

11th August 2008

Draco woke to the feeling of a hand on the back of his head, softly stroking his hair. His neck ached terribly from where he’d fallen asleep slumped over onto his arms, sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair next to the hospital bed. Hospital. Harry. The previous day’s events all broke through his sleepy daze at once, and he gasped for air. 

Gentle arms wrapped around him, and he let himself be pulled into Astoria’s warm embrace. Finding his courage in his supportive best friend, Draco allowed himself to peek at Harry’s unconscious form. There was a certain irony in how peaceful he looked, his face free from lines of worry or concern, when he had - and was still - causing so much anxiety for those who loved him. 

The evidence of the past twenty-four hours was still written across Harry’s body, from his gruesome black eye to the arm lying across the covers which was still in the process of being healed from having been entirely crushed by the trunk of the tree. There were cuts and scratches over almost every inch of his skin, and Draco could just make out the edges of the bandage covering an area of Harry’s shoulder, from which he had lost more blood than Draco had ever seen. 

After Draco had managed to get the talking box to connect to Ginny by using guesswork and random chance as to which little square to press, she had instructed him to send up sparks, and not a minute later Luna Lovegood had appeared on a broomstick. 

She had immediately settled on the other side of Harry and begun uttering spells that Draco didn’t recognise. Almost in the same breath as she sent a glowing blue light to Harry’s shoulder, she had informed him that Ginny was taking the Floo Network to the Ministry to get an emergency Portkey sent to them. Later, Draco would learn that Luna was trained in animal healing, and had simply hoped the spells she’d use on a hippogriff would have at least some benefit, but at the time Draco had sat back, bewildered, and wondered if Luna was an angel in a ditzy disguise. 

Draco’s memories of the moments after the clinically efficient, but clearly stressed, Ministry team arrived were hazy; all he could really recall was that people had kept on trying to separate him from Harry, but that he wouldn’t, he _couldn’t _abandon him, couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his side. 

Eventually, they had given up and allowed him to stay. When they reached the hospital, someone had come to heal his broken arm, cleaned the wounds on his feet from walking barefoot, and given him shoes and fresh, dry clothing. 

At some point, Ginny had arrived, worry crinkling her otherwise depressingly pretty face. She had, admittedly, been very helpful, making Luna de-code the healer-speak to something Draco could understand. She hadn’t been disgustingly affectionate, so Draco didn’t get overwhelmed by jealousy, and she hadn’t expected him to leave, for which he was most grateful. In fact, Ginny herself had been ushered out of the hospital by Luna, who had plainly stated that pregnant people needed proper rest and that meant bed. 

Astoria was talking, trying to persuade Draco to leave, to go home and get some proper rest, but he wasn’t really listening. 

“Draco, darling, the healers said that he’s going to be OK. Should be a full recovery, they told me.” She rubbed her hand up and down his back, just like she did with Scorpius when he was upset. 

“This sleeping potion is just to give all the healing potions and spells time to work.” Draco didn’t know if he believed that. “But you know it won’t wear off for at least another 8 hours, so why don’t you go and maybe take a shower, if you don’t want to sleep?” She was saying the words, but Draco got the impression she knew he wouldn’t listen to them; her voice held a kind of affectionate exasperation. “You need to look after yourself, you’ll be no use to anyone if you’re exhausted.” When Draco didn’t reply, she sighed. “You’re not going to move, are you? Honestly, you sexuals make me glad I’m ace sometimes...” 

Draco found that assessment slightly unfair.

“You’d do the same if someone you loved was in here.” 

There was a pause. 

“So you admit you love him, then?” His nod was minute, but Astoria was stroking his hair again, so he knew she felt it. “Oh, Draco…”

* * *

“Proudlove. What in Salazar’s name are you doing here?” 

The idiot of the Auror department did at least look mildly terrified at Draco’s question. Good. He should. 

Ginny, who had waddled back in around 10am, snorted. “Now I see why Harry likes you so much. You don’t mince your words, do you?” 

Draco tried not to let the compliment affect him - she was talking about liking him _platonically. _She was the only one Harry liked in the way Draco wanted to be liked. 

Timidly, Proudlove explained that the Ministry had caught wind of the hurricane almost immediately after it started, as it was such a large weather event. It had been him personally who had set up the anti-apparition wards. Ginny very nearly had to hold Draco back from punching the idiot who had almost caused the unthinkable to happen. She was surprisingly level-headed about it, saying that the worst hadn’t actually happened, and Harry was fine, so Proudlove just needed to _learn his lesson _. 

The culprit, it turned out, had been very easy to identify when Proudlove and co. arrived at the scene; she was hysterically crying and informing confused Muggles that this was all her fault, that she was sorry, that it was all destroyed, that she hadn’t meant for that to happen, and that it was an accident. Draco’s heart sank when he heard her name: Lydia. 

She had seemed so young, asking them to play with her in the snow and wanting to join their investigation to abate her boredom. How could someone so young, so innocent, have caused so much destruction and devastation? Proudlove, being Proudlove, did not have any explanation beyond her name and a proud description of his arrest of a clearly distraught thirteen year old. 

After he’d left, Ginny hit Draco with a look that made him squirm. 

“So, are you leaving it at that? It was Lydia, the teenager staying at the pub? That’s all you’re going to tell Harry when he wakes up?” 

Draco didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to leave Harry’s side, but he didn’t want to let him down by ignoring their case, either. 

“Look, Draco, I know you want to stay, but he’ll want to know. You must know what he’s like about young witches and wizards in the Muggle community.” Ginny’s words were soft and kind, even as they tore through Draco’s heart, showing him how much he didn’t know about the man lying between them. She continued, unaware of Draco’s emotional turmoil. “We’ve got another 5 hours at least, the healers said. Go. Find out what happened, make sure the girl’s OK, then get back here and tell Harry about it.” 

Draco didn’t really have a choice. Ginny was right, of course she was, that was why Harry loved her. She had been so kind to let him stay for so long, but really, he was the colleague in this situation; he was supposed to care about their work, supposed to go and tie up all of its loose ends, rather than moping at his Auror partner’s bedside, pathetically wishing that sheer hope would make him recover quicker. He took one last long gaze at Harry’s beautiful, handsome face, then heaved himself to standing and left the room quickly, not looking back for fear he wouldn’t be able to leave if he did.

* * *

Draco found Lydia in one of the Ministry’s small holding cells. She looked so helpless and despairing that he was immediately incensed that they had left a _child _alone in such a cold, isolating environment, no matter what she had done. 

It took only a few raised eyebrows and cutting words to get his colleagues to agree to let him interview her in their small break room with comfy seats, rather than one of the unfriendly questioning rooms. 

Draco made them both hot chocolate, sat her down on a sofa and took a seat opposite. He watched her carefully blowing on the drink, unsure how to start his questioning. 

“I recognise you. You’re one of those weather geeks. Where’s your partner?” Her questions might have come across insolent or overconfident, if they hadn’t been said in such a small, vulnerable voice. 

“He’s in hospital.” 

Her face instantly fell, the horror and devastation clearly evident. 

“The healers think he’s going to be OK. It could have been much worse. I hope you realise now that your actions have consequences.” His words came out flat and exhausted. 

She nodded her head and looked at the floor, knotting her fingers together in her lap. 

“Lydia, why did you do it? Please, I need to understand. _How _did you do it?” Draco knew he was making a fool of himself by begging like this, but he simply didn’t care. 

Lydia looked up at him, tears pooling in her eyes, her whispered answer hoarse. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I was just bored; I thought the snow would be fun, but no one would play with me.”

Draco wanted to be angry at her, but he found he couldn’t muster even mild annoyance. She was nothing more than a child. 

Trembling fingers came up to wipe away the tear tracks “...And then I was reading about the hurricane in the Wizard of Oz and I wondered if I could make the air move like that if I tried…” She motioned a twisting action with her hands. Even the gesture seemed dejected. Her face crumpled and her voice cracked as she continued to speak. “But then I lost control of it. Once the air had started to spin, I couldn’t make it stop.” Her words were coming out all in a rush, each one more agitated than the last. “It just _kept on_drawing more and more air into it, and I couldn’t stop it, and then it pulled up a tree, and then a rock, and then... I ran.” 

Draco’s Auror training had taught him to always question and never believe the stories people told, but he had no doubt that this girl was telling the truth. He wished Harry were there; he’d have known how to comfort her. He was trying to think of what Harry would do, when a horrible thought occurred to him. 

“Lydia… do you know _how _you made the air move?” he asked, trying not to freak her out by talking casually, hiding the urgency and importance of the question. 

She frowned at him. “I used my magic, of course.” 

Draco tried to suppress his sigh of relief. 

“Right, you used your magic. You mentioned the snow, a moment ago—” 

Lydia nodded quickly. 

“That was me. And I made it evaporate, too. I didn’t want to get hit in the face with it…” She wavered on the last few words, the crying intensifying again. 

This situation really was not Draco’s forté, he needed Harry by his side to guide him through. He _accio- _ed a box of tissues and handed them to Lydia, who reached out to take them with an expression of surprised awe.

“You have magic too? I know my Mum did, and I think the men who a-ar-rested me had a magic _thing _that brought us here, but I’ve never met someone who _has _magic like me!” 

That didn’t make sense. Draco was thoroughly confused. 

“What? But, what about all the other witches and wizards at Hogwarts? You’re thirteen aren’t you? That’s school age.” 

Recognition dawned on Lydia’s face at the word ‘school’.

“Ohhhhh that place! They sent me a letter when I was like, 10, but I couldn’t go off to some fancy boarding school, my Dad needs me at home, so I forged his signature and sent it back to them saying I wasn’t going,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. 

Draco couldn’t believe his ears, though it did explain a few things that had been puzzling him. The weather events had happened at times when other children were at school - but not, apparently, Lydia. Underage magic was still monitored by the Trace, but reports of magic from children who were home educated were routinely disregarded, meaning no-one had been aware of her actions. Draco had been told she hadn’t had a wand on her person, nor had one been found near the scene. Thinking about her lack of wand lead Draco to an even more shocking thought. 

“How did you find the spell you used?” he gently asked. 

Lydia wrinkled her nose. “Spell? Aren’t those from story books? I just held out my hands and concentrated my magic on what I wanted it to do, and that’s what happened.” 

“And that’s what happened…,” Draco repeated faintly. “You mentioned that your mother is a witch? Did she teach you?” 

Lydia shook her head minutely. “No. Mum died in a war when I was little. I don’t remember her, but Dad says she had magic, like me.” 

Just when Draco thought he couldn’t be more surprised by this girl, she dropped yet another bombshell. She clearly had extortionate levels of power, given the damage she had inadvertently caused, and yet she’d never even been taught how to use it. Nevertheless, she was young and he suspected her emotional strength did not match her magical strength, so he tried to keep his composure for her sake. 

“So, your dad is a Muggle?” 

Oddly, anger shadowed her features. “No! I don’t know what that means, but no! He isn’t. Don’t you dare say anything nasty about him!” 

Draco held both hands up in surrender. “Muggle isn’t nasty, I promise! It just means non-magical.” 

Lydia deflated. “Oh. OK then. Yeah, he’s a Muggle. I’m sorry, I get quite defensive of him, because he’s ill, you know?” 

Draco nodded, even though he didn’t actually know, because it seemed like the poor girl needed to feel understood. “But your dad knows about magic?” 

Enthusiasm filled Lydia’s body language as she spoke about her father. “Yeah! He’s always encouraging me to experiment with what I can do, and telling me these stories about my mum making this awesome tiger made out of light appear. Apparently I used to love it, I really want to learn how to do that but I haven’t figured it out yet…” 

Draco smiled. “I think that was a Patronus. The animal reflects the caster’s personality. Harry’s is a stag.” 

Lydia winced. “Is Harry your partner? I’m so sorry I put him in hospital…” 

Draco nodded, the hopeless sadness returning in full force once again. “You’ve already apologised. It was an accident.” He swallowed, took a deep breath and tried to sound more confident than he felt. “I don’t think the snow was your first weather experiment, was it?” 

Lydia’s guilty expression and quick glance to the side was as good as any answer. 

“How did you know?” 

Draco let out a noise of disbelief. “Lydia, do you really think snow in the middle of summer could be passed off as natural?” She shook her head sheepishly. “And what about all the other ‘experiments’ you’ve done? Can you think of any of them which _wouldn’t _be reported as odd?” 

Lydia looked thoughtful. “The rain? I made it drizzle permanently for the whole week around Mary Bluett’s birthday because she called Dad a cripple.” 

“You’re right, _that _rain we didn’t notice. The rain in Newcastle that people said was pulsing, it stopped and started so much, we _did _notice, though.” He told her with raised eyebrows.

Lydia, the cheeky mare, had the audacity to giggle! 

“It wasn’t _pulsing _it was _beating _and if you’d paid attention you’d have noticed it was in time to Umbrella by Rihanna.” 

Once again, Draco found himself wishing Harry were there; he would have translated the Muggle-speak, and probably laughed at Draco’s lack of knowledge. 

“Why were you even in Newcastle? You seem to move around a lot for a teenager. Where was your dad while you were staying at Pippa’s pub in Scotland?” He leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees. 

“At home. Auntie Jenna comes to look after Dad one weekend a month so I can—” she held up her fingers in mock quotation marks “— ‘go and enjoy myself and be a child’ which basically means I go stay with their friends and I don’t do anything to help Dad until I get home.” 

The more she spoke, the more Draco realised how extraordinary this young girl was. They spent the next half an hour discussing each and every one of Lydia’s weather experiments, from the rainbows (which had been a celebration of the start of the summer holidays), to the waves she had made rise up to the height of Brighton Pier ‘just to see if she could’. Testing her limits seemed to be a common theme, as did boredom, and Draco couldn’t help but think that she would adore Wizarding education. 

“You’d never consider going to Hogwarts? They’d properly train you to use your magic.” He asked as off-handedly as he could manage. 

Lydia visibly bristled. “I can use my magic already. And no, I can’t leave Dad, he has multiple sclerosis, he needs daily care. He couldn’t cope without me,” she said decisively, leaving no room for argument. 

“What if we could make your dad’s life easier with magic, or get someone else to look after him?” Draco suggested carefully. 

Lydia’s expression softened, and she unfolded her arms from where she’d sternly crossed them. 

Suddenly, her expression changed. 

Draco heard the door behind him open, and turned to see Minister Shacklebolt entering the room. “I’ve got it from here, Malfoy. I appreciate that you’ve looked after her, but we cannot have minors in our custody without proper guardianship. Lydia, let’s get you home.” 

As he ushered Lydia out of the door, the Minister told Draco in a low voice that Proudlove had ignored all protocol when he apprehended Lydia, and had carried out her arrest so incorrectly that, in the eyes of the law, he had as good as abducted the child. To add insult to injury, he had also obliviated Pippa the pub landlady haphazardly, leading her to believe that Lydia had suddenly disappeared. The poor woman had been highly distressed, and had rung the Muggle police, sent out a search party, and informed Lydia’s father that she was missing. Needless to say, Proudlove was unlikely to be donning Auror-red robes again any time soon. 

Despite now having the explanations he had come to find, Draco couldn’t help but feel like the case wasn’t truly _resolved _. The chirpy, enthusiastic, powerful young girl who had just waved goodbye as she left was no closer to getting the education she deserved, and something in Draco’s gut told him that Harry would feel equally as uncomfortable with this as he did. 

Glancing at the time, Draco’s heart skipped - Harry would be waking up in less than an hour and a half. He needed to get back, because regardless of whether he was overstepping or making his feelings too obvious, Draco was going to be there when Harry’s spectacularly green eyes fluttered open again.

* * *

Ginny had been replaced by a rather bedraggled-looking Weasley and Granger when Draco returned to Harry’s hospital room. He hovered in the doorway, wanting desperately to return to Harry’s side but unsure whether he would be welcomed there. 

Weasley noticed him standing there deliberating, and pushed himself wearily out of his chair. 

“Hi, Malfoy.” Draco wondered if he was getting up to tell him to go away, but instead he gestured to the chair he had just vacated. “Did I steal your seat? Gin said you’d probably be back soon.” 

Draco shook his head faintly, feeling like he had just woken up in a strange alternate dimension where he and Weasley were friends. “No, it’s not my seat, I was sat there, but I don’t own it. Please, sit back down. You look like you need it. And I can always conjure another.” 

Weasley looked relieved as he flopped back into the chair. “Thanks, mate. The bloody wanker had to get hurt while we were in Australia introducing Hermione’s parents to Hugo. Had to take five separate Portkeys and a Muggle plane to get here so quickly.” He leant his elbows against Harry’s bed. “What actually happened? My wonderful little sister buggered off to have a birthday lunch with Luna without even telling us.” 

Draco tried to hide his disapproval of Ginny’s actions from her brother, but he couldn’t understand how she could possibly be celebrating while the man who loved her was lying unconscious in hospital. Pushing away the jealous thoughts of how much better he would treat Harry, Draco filled Weasley and Granger in on the whirlwind that had lead them there. 

As it drew closer to the time Harry was due to wake, the room around them became more and more crowded. A constant stream of Healers, Mediwitches and Mediwizards came, ran diagnostics or check-up spells, had discussions about Harry that Draco didn’t understand, and prepped potions at the back of the room, before leaving again to be quickly replaced by others. 

Draco found himself stood awkwardly by Harry’s head, opposite Ginny, who had commandeered a chair the second she had returned, because pregnant. Luna stood behind her, plaiting her hair and humming a tune that felt far too cheerful for Draco’s anxiety. 

The Weasley mother bustled into the room, and conjured new seats for everyone but her husband, who was ordered to go and buy everyone tea from the hospital café because “don’t they look like they need a nice cup of tea?” 

No one had yet questioned Draco’s presence, so he sunk into the chair and hoped that by sitting in the corner he was less visible, in addition to being as close as possible to Harry’s handsome face. Draco sat silently as the others discussed Granger and Weasley’s trip; he couldn’t understand how they could make small talk while Harry was still comatose and visibly battered. 

When Mr Weasley returned, levitating more cups of tea than could possibly be safe in a hospital, Draco kept his eyes on Harry, feeling awkward. A light touch on his arm made him look up. 

“A cup of tea will help, Draco, here you go, dear.” A paper cup was pressed into his hands. 

“Thank you, Mrs Weasley. That’s very kind.” 

She patted his shoulder. “Call me Molly, and no thanks are necessary. You’re part of the family, now.” 

Draco just nodded, not knowing the appropriate response to such affection. He felt more than a little overwhelmed by the instant, easy acceptance, and equally confused.

A silence fell over the room when three healers entered the room together and announced they were about to wake Harry up. Draco’s heart moved to sit in his throat, its rhythm furiously fast, despite the fact that he wasn’t daring to breathe. The healers explained that he would likely be a little confused and ‘out of it’, but that was just the pain relief potions and was nothing to worry about. 

It took a few seconds of tense quiet before Harry moved slightly, his head slowly lolling towards Draco. His eyelids fluttered, and a moment later he sleepily half-opened his eyes, just a sliver of green shining past his lashes. He looked around, his gaze pausing on Draco and taking what little breath Draco had away. 

“Draco, you’re alive! Good. That’s good.” Harry’s voice sounded far away and spaced, but it was Harry’s voice and it was the best sound Draco had ever heard. 

He gave Harry a watery smile. “I’m sorry I laughed at your Muggle talking box.” 

Granger snorted. “Seriously? You sit here for nearly twenty four hours straight, only leaving his side when Ginny guilt-trips you, and that’s what you say to him when he wakes up?” 

Harry completely ignored both of them. “I called out; ‘Draco, DRACO’ to you.” His anguish was clear, even in the recounted words. “But you wouldn’t turn around, stubborn bastard. I was so worried I was going to lose you.” 

Harry looked truly forlorn and Draco had never felt more guilty in his entire life. 

“You didn’t lose me, I’m here,” he whispered. 

Draco went to pat Harry’s hand comfortingly, but as soon as they touched, Harry turned his hand over and entwined their fingers. Draco was pretty sure his heart had actually stopped, but if this was what dying felt like, then he was OK with that. 

The moment was broken by Luna dreamily saying, “Oh, this is my favourite part!”

Draco dragged his focus from Harry to frown at her. She now had her arms draped loosely over Ginny’s shoulders, and was leaning down so their faces were pressed together, side-by-side. It struck Draco as an oddly intimate position for two friends, but he figured some women were just overly affectionate. 

Before Draco could ask what the bloody hell Luna was referring to, Harry piped up again. “Luna! You’re here, and Gin-Gin’s here.” He looked around the room with child-like curiosity. “And Ron’s here, and Molly’s here, and Arthur’s here, and Hermione…” A deep frown filled Harry’s face. “If everyone’s here, where are my children?” He whipped his head around quickly as if searching for them. “James? Albus?” 

Ginny rolled her eyes. “_ Now _he thinks about the kids. Mr. more-lives-than-a-bloody-cat doesn’t think about the children while he’s dicing with death, but _now _he worries,” she muttered with fond exasperation. She leant forwards and spoke directly to Harry. “Our children are being looked after by your godson.” 

Harry closed his eyes and smiled dazedly. “Teddy! Great kid.” He opened his eyes suddenly. “Teddy’s ten.” 

“Yes, Harry, Teddy is ten,” Ginny’s tone was unyielding. Draco felt chastised, and he wasn’t even on the receiving end of her wrath. “And unlike our children who are mercifully still young enough to be blissfully unaware of their father’s recklessness, _he _understands the severity of the situation and was _inconsolable _when he found out.” 

Draco realised that he had begun to run his thumb up and down Harry’s hand; a subconscious way of offering him comfort.

“The only way me and Andromeda could get him to calm down was by giving him the important task of looking after your children for you,” Ginny finished, and flopped against the back of her chair again. “Obviously, Andromeda is supervising this.” 

There was a beat of silence, then, “Bloody hell, Gin, you’re turning into Mum.” 

Granger batted her husband’s arm. “She’s perfectly entitled to worry about her children. And your Mum is a wonderful person, I’d love to be anything like her.”

Weasley shuddered. “Oh god, please no.” 

Draco felt Harry squeeze his hand, and he turned his attention away from the Weasley family banter.

“You OK?” he asked in a low voice. 

Harry tugged their hands up to his chest and gave him a dopey grin. “Yeah… I am Oh-kay.” He frowned. “But what happened? There was snow, then you disappeared in misty fog! And then the twisty wind came, and it was a crisis. Did you find the bad guy?” Harry spoke quietly, but there was an urgency in his tone. 

Draco wanted to both laugh and cry. Harry would never normally refer to a perpetrator as a ‘bad guy’, but he was truly adorable like this, with none of his normal filters and defences. 

He bent his head to explain the developments in the case, including how the person they’d been looking for was neither bad, nor a guy. Harry was laid back against the pillows with his eyes closed, so Draco wasn’t sure how much of what he was saying he was actually absorbing, but he would gladly repeat himself a thousand times for Harry.

When he finished, he realised the rest of the room had fallen silent to listen to his rundown of the case. He wasn’t sure what to do with all the attention, the spotlight made him feel awkward; it had been a long time since he’d wanted to be noticed. 

Luckily, Harry saved him. “How did we get here?” he asked, in the same way someone else might ask what was for tea. 

Draco didn’t particularly want to recall those awful hours in the destroyed Highland landscape, so he was grateful when Ginny responded. “Draco found you knocked-out under a tree, and phoned me, so I could raise the alarm.” 

“Draco used a phone? But he doesn’t know how to Muggle!” Harry exclaimed, looking at Draco with disbelief. 

“Well he managed it, and I’m pretty sure he saved your life in doing so.” 

Draco felt his face heating. “No, I took far too long to find him and all I really did was push some little squares. Luna is the true hero, if she hadn’t arrived so quickly and done all those healing spells… She kept you alive until we could get you here.” 

He could feel the tears forming in his eyes again, all the fear and relief and worry of the past twenty-four hours had left him emotionally exhausted. 

Harry, having not witnessed most of this, did not seem to be suffering the same problem. He held his free hand up to Luna. “Yeah! High-five on healy skills!” Luna looked bemused as she leant over Ginny’s shoulder to meet Harry’s gesture. Harry turned to Draco. “This is why she’s gonna be the best stepmum to my kids.” 

Draco didn’t have time to process the words before Ginny was hissing “_ Harry _!”, and the man’s attention was drawn away from him. 

Still in an annoyed half-whisper, Ginny leant closer to Harry, though the room was so quiet that everyone heard her words. “I haven’t asked her yet, you muppet!”

Draco was well and truly lost; he had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. 

“Oh,” came Harry’s reply. “Luna, will you marry Ginny?” 

Everything stopped, all of the available air left the room and the entire universe flipped on its axis. Draco must have misheard, or misunderstood, or mis-_ something _. Unless Harry, Ginny and Luna were in a three-way relationship? But instinctively Draco knew that wasn’t the case. Maybe this was all some kind of big, private joke? If that was the case, why was Ginny hiding her deep crimson face in her hands?

Luna’s floaty voice broke Draco out of his rapidly spiralling internal conflict. “I’m not sure Ginny wanted you to ask me that.” Still with one arm wrapped around Ginny’s shoulder, stroking her arm absently, she reached forwards to brush a strand of hair from Harry’s eyes. “Of course, I’d love to marry her, she is rather wonderful, isn’t she?” 

Harry’s face split into a beam that lit up the entire room, and Draco thought he might be about to faint, he was so overwhelmed. 

Later, Draco would blame fatigue, being mentally drained, and fumes from the potions Harry was on for his total lack of subtlety when he spoke up. “But… Harry, I thought _you_were dating Ginny?” 

The whole room erupted into raucous laughter. 

“Mate, have you seen the way those two look at each other?” Weasley wheezed out. “They’re the most obvious couple in the history of lesbianism!” 

Draco looked back to find Harry giving him a hurt, confused look which wrinkled his forehead and made the scar stand out more than usual. Draco had the sudden desire to reach out and trace it with his fingers. He didn’t. 

Harry spoke in a small, vulnerable way. “But… I told you. I’m not with anyone.” He looked down, his hand gripping Draco’s tightly where he still hadn’t let go - not that Draco was complaining. 

“She’s having your baby, so I just assumed…” 

“We did your cup thing! Like you did for Scorpy!” His tone had at least now brightened; the upset one had been giving Draco chest ache. Even if he was determined to butcher poor Scorpius’ name. 

Suddenly, Granger gasped. “Wait, that’s not why you suddenly started acting more irritable around Harry, is it?” 

Draco knew his face was going red, but there was no escape, Granger just kept on talking. “Draco, were you _jealous _?” 

He wanted to run, to hide, to deny the truth, but he couldn’t; those gorgeous, piercing green eyes were staring at him with what looked like awe. 

“Noooo, silly Mione! Jealous means _liking, _” he stated with finality. A second later, his eyes lost their shine and he suddenly looked terribly small and miserable. “And Draco doesn’t like me.” 

Harry’s focus hadn’t strayed from Draco, and it made him feel like he was out of his depth and drowning in Harry’s careful scrutiny. Conflicting thoughts buzzed through his brain. Harry was clearly upset at the thought that Draco didn’t like him, but why would he be upset if he didn’t like him back? And Harry couldn’t possibly like him back. That was unthinkable, wasn’t it? 

There was a few minutes when nobody spoke, the atmosphere so tense that you could have heard a pin drop, then: “I think you should go, Malfoy. You can’t lead Harry on like this.”

Weasley’s face was stony, all earlier traces of humour gone. 

“No!” Harry turned to Draco with a simple plea: “Stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere, not if you don’t want me to. And… and I _was _jealous,” he admitted, training his gaze securely on the floor, fully aware of the hideous blush sweeping his entire body.

“Hermione?”

“Yes, Harry?” she responded gently. 

“Draco said he was jealous.” 

“I heard.” 

“Jealousy is bad. But jealousy means liking…doesn’t it? I… I don’t understand. Help.” 

“Well,” Hermione started softly, but she was interrupted by Ginny. 

“For Merlin’s sake, the pair of you are both oblivious idiots!” She pointed at Harry. “You, Draco has sat here for hours looking like a kicked puppy. He. Is. Into. You. OK?” She turned her attention to Draco. “And Draco, Harry’s so obviously in love with you, he practically has little hearts in his eyes when he looks at you.” Ginny threw both hands out towards them, her words exasperated. “You’re literally _holding hands _, so can you please just sort yourselves out before we all die of old age?” 

The more Ginny’s words sunk in, the lighter and more giddy Draco felt. He couldn’t stop himself from breaking into a wide smile as the euphoria flooded through his veins. Draco knew his disbelief and joy were both obvious. 

Harry looked up at him with a crooked grin, tears and an open vulnerability in his eyes. “Do you really like me back?” 

“Yeah. I like you. A lot. Too much.” He brought their joined hands up to his face and kissed the back of Harry’s hand. 

Harry watched the movement, his smile getting wider and more attractive. “Nope. Not possible. I bet I like you more.” 

Draco raised an eyebrow, though he knew the effect was ruined by the fact he was crying the happiest tears of his life. “I highly doubt that.” 

“I do! I bet you… I bet you three hundred sickles _and _a strawberry that I like you the most!” Harry argued emphatically. 

Draco leant forwards and cupped Harry’s face with his hand, running his thumb softly over Harry’s lips. “You’re an idiot and I really want to kiss you right now, but you’re off your face on pain potions, so Weasley might hex me for taking advantage.” 

“Nah, he won’t,” came Weasley’s voice. “Within reason,” he quickly added, finishing by mumbling; “and it’s Ron, alright?” 

Summoning all the courage he owned, Draco gently pressed his lips to Harry’s. The room erupted in cheers, applause, and a loud sniffle that came from where Molly was stood, but Draco barely heard any of it past the celebratory exclamations taking place in his mind. Harry’s lips were warm and soft, and it was a struggle for Draco not to deepen the kiss and learn exactly how he tasted. It was chaste, but it was sweet, and to Draco it was perfect, because it was a kiss with Harry.

* * *

1st August 2009 

“Hi!” Astoria flopped into the seat beside Draco, her face flushed from exertion. 

“Hey,” he replied, without looking away from the dance floor. 

Scorpius was giggling happily as he was spun around in circles by Teddy Lupin. They had become close almost instantly when Harry had introduced the Malfoys to their relative - both children thrilled to have a real life cousin. 

A safe distance away, Harry was failing rather spectacularly at the dance moves Lydia was attempting to teach him. 

Even before he had been released from hospital, Harry had made it his personal mission to ensure she was properly educated, and Draco couldn’t have been prouder of the way he had negotiated getting her father a mixture of magical healing and help, so that she could attend Hogwarts without worrying about him. He had even arranged a weekly Floo call to ease the transition for both of them. Lydia was thriving at school, and loving every minute. Her father was doing well, too. He was around somewhere; the last Draco had seen, he’d been in a jovial debate with Andromeda about thirteenth century Muggle literature. 

“The brides looked beautiful, didn’t they?” Astoria’s voice pulled him back into the moment. 

Draco nodded absently, remembering the way Ginny’s fitted green dress had accentuated her red hair, and how Luna had suited her flowing bright blue and orange number perfectly. They had both looked truly wonderful, but Draco secretly thought that Ginny’s best man had trumped them all. 

Harry’s black suit was flawlessly tailored, and flattered his gorgeous figure in the most incredible way. Draco had struggled to pay attention to the wedding ceremony, when all he had really wanted to do was ruffle up his handsome boyfriend’s smart formalwear. 

After almost a year together, Draco had become more secure in their relationship, and while he was sure he’d never stop looking at Harry and wanting desperately to touch him, nowadays he had more patience - though even now he marvelled every time it hit him that he _could _just go up to Harry and wrap his arms around his waist - that Harry would be with him in their bedroom that night and still there the following morning. 

Astoria’s sweet, tinkling laugh filled Draco’s ears. “Go.” He felt her hand on his back, gently shoving him forward. “You quite clearly want to be over there; you’ve been staring at him for the past ten minutes. Go!” Her shoving became a little more insistent. 

Draco resisted, laughing. “No! I don’t _do _dancing. I’m perfectly fine right here, thank you _very _much.” 

Astoria snorted inelegantly. 

“Nor does your boyfriend! Have you _seen _him? I had to tell Scorpius to move out of the danger zone!” 

Not even Draco could deny that Harry’s efforts on the dance floor were atrocious at best, a health hazard at worst, but he was chuckling brightly, looking carefree and happy, and that alone made Draco’s insides melt like the chocolate flowing over the fountain in the corner. 

“Go on. You already look ridiculous for drooling over that mess of limbs, you may as well enjoy yourself.” 

Draco was about to argue when Harry caught his eye and beamed at the same moment as Astoria properly pushed him forward out of his seat, and the words died on his tongue. 

“Can I join you?” Draco asked, scratching the back of his neck nervously. It was a new habit, and Astoria teased him mercilessly for turning into Harry whenever she noticed him doing it. 

“Yes! I’m trying to teach him the moves to “Single Ladies” but I’m sorry Harry’s not much of a Beyoncé,” Lydia exclaimed, as Harry nearly punched the floor. 

Draco raised an eyebrow, but decided not to ask what a Beyoncé was. Harry would no doubt explain later, anyway. 

A second later, Harry’s hand on the small of his back nudged him forwards. “Sorry,” he murmured into Draco’s ear, “I’m trying to keep an eye on the chocolate fountain and the cake. I’m 90% sure James has reached the stage where he’s trying to get poor Lily to toddle through the child repelling charms and get to it.” 

Draco now noticed James knelt on the floor in front of his little sister, right at the perimeter of the charmed area. “To be fair, you did name him after two of the most notorious mischief makers ever. This is sort of to be expected.” 

With his line of vision now clear, Harry returned to throwing his limbs around seemingly at random. “Thanks, love. I appreciate the support.” 

Draco shrugged and carefully tried to mimic the move Lydia was demonstrating. 

There was a crash, the sound of James groaning, and then Albus and Rose calling him “bad” and patting a surprisingly unfazed Lily on the head. 

“At least Albus hasn’t started dating any megalomaniacs and talking about the greater good, yet!” Draco told Harry, twisting his hand in the air. 

“Funny. You know this is actually your fault? James is only acting up because Teddy’s attention is on Scorpius.” Under the guise of ‘dancing’ Harry moved so he was close enough to poke him in the side. 

Draco rolled his eyes. “Yeah, it’s definitely my well behaved child’s fault.” 

At that moment, James ran up to them, his lower lip wobbling. On instinct, Draco leant down and scooped him up, then peered down at his small face and asked, “have you been being a cheeky monkey, mister?” He tickled James’s tummy, eliciting a giggle and a squirm. 

After he’d set James back on the floor and watched Lydia grab his hands to dance, he caught Harry staring at him with a bemused, fond expression. 

“You know you’re only encouraging him when you do that, right?” 

Draco raised a shoulder. “He looked upset. What was I supposed to do?”

Harry stepped into his space and wrapped his arms around him. “Draco Malfoy, you are such an adorable softie. You act all tough but you can’t bear to see a child mildly upset.” 

Draco bristled. “That’s not true.” 

Harry kissed his cheek. “Babe, you spent _three hours _yesterday fixing Albus’s favourite book after Lily chewed it. And my daughter has you completely wrapped around her little finger.” 

“How could I not be! Have you seen how tiny Lily’s fingers are? And of course I fixed the book. I don’t want Albus to be scarred for life and never read again!” 

Harry laughed, puffing breath against Draco’s skin where their faces were still close. 

“Admit it, you adore my children.” 

Draco grimaced. “I hate you.” 

Harry cupped his face and mumbled into his lips, “you love me. _And _my kids.” 

“Eeeewwwwww stop kissing, that’s yucky!” came a young voice from significantly higher up than was normally expected. Scorpius was sitting astride Teddy’s shoulders, holding his hands over his eyes and giggling hysterically. 

Harry’s mouth went to Draco’s ear, and he spoke so neither child could hear, “my kids never interrupt us saying we’re ‘yucky’, either.” 

Before Draco could argue, Harry was planting exaggerated little kisses on a wriggling Scorpius’s face, “Yucky? You mean like this?” He gave Teddy’s forehead a quick peck. “Or this?” Teddy squealed and ran away, both children laughing like maniacs. 

Harry turned to Draco, his smile genuine and amused, but after a second of Draco staring at him it faltered. “What?” 

Draco pulled him closer and buried his face in Harry’s neck. “Nothing. I just can’t believe my luck. I never thought I’d get to experience love like this.” 

Harry leant back so he could look Draco straight in the eye. “I promise you, I’m the lucky one, here. And now I’m going to push that luck by asking my gorgeous, amazing, sentimental boyfriend who I love very much to dance with me!” 

Draco gave him a look of mock horror and made a show of casting spells to protect his toes, then let himself be swept around the dance floor, unable to stop a massive grin from filling his face as Harry somehow made even slow dancing seem ridiculous. 

_Fin! _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I really hope you enjoyed it! 😊


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